UNIVERSITY STUDENTS' LIFE SATISFACTION: A COMPARISON ACCORDING TO SPORTING CIRCUMSTANCES

The aim of this research is to investigate the life satisfaction level of university students according to their sporting circumstances. Answers to the following questions have been sought to reach the main purpose of this study: a) what are the life satisfaction levels of students sporting and not sporting? b) Is there a significant difference between sporting situations and various variables in university students? The research is quantitive and descriptive survey model. The target population of research is composed of the students studying in Siirt University in 2016. The way of taking sample has been tried because of reasons such as the difficulty, time and cost of reaching target population. The sample group of this study consists of 519 students selected through cluster sampling method. It is considered that the sample presents the target population with a deviation of 0,5 because of the presence of 10,040 students in Siirt University. ‘Life satisfaction scale’ developed by Diener, Emmons, Larsen and Griffin (1985) and adapted to Turkish by Şimşek (2011) has been used as a data collection tool in the study. It has been found that the Turkish translation of the Cronbach alpha coefficient is .87 (Şimşek, 2011). The scale consists of 11 items and is the one factor. Likert type 5s grading has been used in the scale. The independence variables of the scale have consisted of open-ended short answers; the answers have been categorized by descriptive analysis method and new independence variables have been composed. For example; the answers to the question in the form “what do you feel when you do sport?” have been categorized and independence variables have been composed. The difference tests (T-test and ANOVA) have been used to look at the significance difference between independence variables and life satisfaction levels in the analysis of data. The arithmetic average and standard deviation amounts have been taken as basis for revealing life level. At the result of the research, it has been found that generally, the life satisfaction levels of the students were high, the life satisfaction levels of student’s sports were relatively higher than students not sporting and there wasn’t significant difference among branches of those sporting. It is also the result of the research that life satisfaction levels of those stating the reason of sporting was “he/she feels bad” were relatively higher than those stating sport ‘for hobby