Investigation of decision making styles and problem solving skill levels of school administrators doing sports and non sports

The aim of this thesis is to examine the decision-making styles and problem-solving skill levels of school administrators who do and do not do sports. For this purpose, the study was carried out according to the descriptive survey model, one of the quantitative research methods. The study area of the research consists of 2334 school administrators working in Bursa in the 2021-2022 academic year. The sample of the study is 358 school administrators who participated in the study in this area. In order to collect the data of the thesis study, the Personal Information Form prepared by consulting expert opinions, the Problem Solving Scale (PSS) and the Melbourne Decision-Making Scale (MDMS), which are among the scales whose international validity and reliability studies have been carried out, were used. The analysis of the data was made by using the SPSS program, and the level of significance was taken as α=0.05 The conformity of the total and subscale scores obtained from the PSS and MDMS to the normal distribution was examined using the Shapiro Wilk test. When the scale scores were in accordance with the normal distribution, the mean and standard deviation; median is given with its minimum and maximum values when it does not conform to the normal distribution. The reliability of the scales was evaluated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. In the comparison of the scale scores between the groups, Mann Whitney U test was used when there were two groups and conformity to normal distribution was not observed, and Kruskal Wallis test was used when the number of groups was more than two groups and conformity to normal distribution was not observed. When overall significance was found after the Kruskal Wallis test, subgroup analyzes were conducted using the Dunn-Boenferroni test. Categorical variables were compared between groups using Chi-Square Test, Fisher's exact Chi-Square Test and Fisher Exact test. As a result; There was no difference between the school administrators in the study who received and did not take management training and who did and did not do sports according to the school type variants. According to the sportive background variant, it was found that there was a significant difference between school administrators who did and did not play sports professionally. According to the self-esteem subscale; it was observed that there was no significant difference regarding the variants of gender, department graduated, whether management training was taken, perspective on sports, and whether any sports was played in elementary and middle school years. As for the perception of problem solving skills; it was determined that there was no significant difference regarding the variants of gender, whether management training was taken, perspective on sports, and whether any sports was played in elementary and middle school years. Additionally, when participants' perceptions of problem solving skill were examined, it was found that there was no significant difference between groups that did and did not play sports. Nonetheless, it was determined that the participants in the sports group used the subscales measuring desired-positive approach styles, which are subscales of the problem solving scale, more. On the other hand, it was found that school administrators in the non-sportive group used ineffective-negative approach styles more. It was further concluded that school administrators who had a high frequency of playing sports among the participants had higher of self-esteem in decision making, careful decision making and problem solving skill perception. It was also concluded that school administrators who played sports use the careful decision making style.