Investigation of mental toughness and creativity levels of individuals engaged in sports

The purpose of this study is to analyze the mental toughness and creativity levels of individuals doing sports. A total of 336 individuals, 122 women and 214 men, between the ages of 18-25, participated in the study voluntarily. Sport Mental Toughness Questionnaire is applied to determine the mental toughness level of athletes. Creative Personality Traits Scale was used to determine the creativity traits of athletes. The analysis of the data in this study was carried out using IBM SPSS 25 package program. One-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) test was used to compare athletes' mental toughness levels and creative personality traits in sports. Pearson's correlation analysis was used for the relationship between mental toughness and creative personality traits in sports. As a result of the statistical analysis, a significant difference was found in the mental toughness levels of the participants in sports in terms of gender (p=0,001) and nationality (p=0,01) variables, while no significant difference was found in terms of the sport type variable (p=0,361). While a significant difference was found in the creative personality traits of the athletes participating in the study in terms of gender variable (p=0,000), no significant difference was found in terms of nationality status (p=0,146) and sports type (p=0,589) variables. A positive significant relationship was found between the mental toughness levels of the participants and their creative personality traits (p=0,000). As a result of this study, it is found that as the creativity levels of athletes' increase, their mental toughness levels will increase, it is recommended to include exercises related to creativity in training to improve the mental toughness levels of athletes.