Investigation of relationship between Turkey table tennis leadership orientation and personality characteristics of athletes in league play

The aim of this study is to determine leadership orientations and personality traits of table tennis athletes according to some variables.253 licensed athletes competing in the Turkish Table Tennis League involved in the research. In the data collection phase of the research, participants filled a questionnaire form consisted of three parts. First part of the questionnaire included a form that consisted of the demographic characteristics of the participants. Second part consisted of the "Leadership Orientation Scale" that has four sub-dimensions. This scale was developed by Bolman and Deal (1991) to assess the sense of leadership of participants and was adapted into Turkish by Dereli (2003). Third part consisted of the "Big Five-50 Personality Test" having five sub-dimensions. This test was developed by Goldberg (1992) to identify the personality characteristics of participants and was adapted into Turkish by Tatar (2017). In the analysis of the research data, it is observed whether the responses of the participants in the second and third part of the questionnaire show statistically significant differences according to age, education, playing time, league and gender variables, and the relationship between personality traits and leadership orientations. Independent samples t-test and one-way ANOVA test were performed for the statistical analyses. The pearson correlation analysis technique was used to determine which has the strongest relationships are among the Big Five-50 Personality Test scale and Leadership Orientation Scale sub-dimensions. The coefficient of internal consistency of the Big five-50 Personality Test scale is observed as .75. The coefficient of internal consistency of the Leadership Orientation scale is observed as .88.It is stated there is a significant difference between the personality traits of the participating athletes according to the variables of gender, age, education and year played, and there is a significant difference according to the leadership orientations and gender, age, year and education variable of the participating athletes. It is also stated personality traits and leadership orientation does not show significant differences according to the leagues played by the athletes. When the relationship between personality traits and leadership orientations are examined, positive and significant relationships are determined in all sub-dimensions of personality traits and leadership orientations. As a consequence, leadership and personality traits are related to each other. Keywords; Personality, Leadership, Table tennis.