Investigation of awareness and cyber victimization for classification basketball referee in Turkey

Referees are a neutral person who takes responsibility to be managed matches according to the rules of competitions. Today, changes and developments in information technology is to attract people into the virtual world and often beyond the limits of criticism can turn into cyber harassment and cyber bullying. Especially, this situation may directly affect before and after match to the performance of the referees. This study was carried out to investigate the cyber victimization and awareness of classification referees of basketball in Turkey. Totally 207 basketball referees who serve as A, B and C classification in Turkey Basketball Leagues was participated to the study. Cyber Sensitivity Scale composed of 14 items and Cyber Victimization Scale composed of 24 items developed by Arıcak et al. were applied to basketball referees. The obtained data were analyzed in statistical packages program, T-parametric tests and Tukey's test of variance analysis were performed to compare. In the result of the research; while basketball referees showed more sensitivity against cyber bullying (= 36.29), also male referees showed more sensitivity than females. B classification referees have significantly less sensitivity than other classification referee. Age, marital status, education, occupation, referee experience, first entering the web address on the Internet, daily internet usage time, internet access sites and the internet transport tools were found no affect against cyber bullying. In other words, basketball referees had a high level of cyber victimization (= 43.55), however B classification referee had been attacked than other classification referees and it was found significantly in term of daily 9-12 hours on the internet usage. Gender, age, marital status, education, occupation, referee experience, first entering the web address on the internet, internet access sites and the internet transport tools were found no affect against cyber victimization. As a result, despite showing sensitivity of the basketball referees are exposed to cyber victimization, it can be said it is not related to the victimization of daily internet usage time.