The Analysis of University Students’ Views on Mentally Challenged People’s Participation to Sports Events

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate university students’ attitudes towards mentally challenged individuals’
participation to sports activities. To collect the data, ‘Attitude towards sports activities scale of individuals having
mental disabilities’ is used. Reliability of the scale, which has been developed by (İlhan et al., 2013) and consists of 28
items, is 0.96. The options, respectively, follow as: I completely agree, I agree, I’m neutral, I disagree and I completely
disagree. The study group consists of 420 students who study at Bülent Ecevit University in 2016-2017 Spring Term,
and is selected randomly. The result shows that there is no statistically significant difference in the attitude ratings of
mentally challenged individuals’ participation to sports activities related to age, sex, types of education, or if there is
any disabled individual living in participants’ social environments. But, type of school is a significant variant. The
ratings of attitude of the participants who selected the option, ‘other’ in their school type part in the tool are higher than
of the one ones who selected the options, ‘faculty’ or ‘vocational school’.