The relationship between attitudes of sports science students towards the disabled and their paralympic perceptions

Aim: When the students of the sport scineces graduate, they work as professionals at all levels of the sports sector of our country. At the same time, the attitudes of sports professionals towards disabled individuals are important for the dissemination of disabled sports. Awareness levels of sports professionals for the Paralympic Games, which is the largest sports organization in the world for the disabled, may be one of the important factors affecting the sports life of the disabled. Therefore, the problematic of our study; The relationship between the attitudes of sports science students, who will be sports professionals in the future, towards the disabled and their perception levels about the Paralympic games. Material Method: For this purpose, the students of sport sciences who are studying at the higher education level in the cities of the TRB1 region determined by the Turkish Statistical Institute (Bingöl, Eleazığ, Malatya and Tunceli) "Attitude Scale Towards Individuals with Special Needs" and "Paralympic Sports Awareness Scale" were applied. Data were analyzed with SPSS 22.0 and Eviews Programs. Results: The results of the analysis showed that the Paralympic awareness of the sports science students and their attitudes towards the disabled are variables that affect each other, there are significant relationships between them both for the sum of the scales and for the sub-dimensions, and there are various significant differences in terms of demographic characteristics. Conclusion: According to the results; Attitudes of sports science students towards individuals with special needs emerged as the most prominent factor affecting their Paralympic awareness. In addition, it was observed that there were some relationships and significant differences according to other sub-dimensions and demographic characteristics.