LEISURE SATISFACTION IN RECREATIONAL PHYSICAL FITNESS PARTICIPANTS

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the leisure satisfaction, in physical fitness participants. One hundred male physical fitness participants and 123 male control subjects aged 18–35 years and who usually exercised at least 3 times per week voluntarily participated in this study. The control subjects consisted of footballers, basketball players, volleyball players, etc. Professional players were excluded from both groups. Leisure satisfaction was determined using the Leisure Satisfaction Scale (LSS) developed by Beard & Raghed (1980), which was adapted into Turkish by Gökçe as a short form scale (2011). This scale contains 24 items in six subscales: a) psychological, b) educational, c) social, d) relaxation, e) physiological, and f) aesthetic satisfaction. The scale is a 5-point Likert-type scale. The Cronbach’s alpha value for the whole LSS was .90. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was performed to test for normality. As the data were not normally distributed, the Mann-Whitney U-test was used to determine differences between the groups. The chi-square test was used to compare sports experience between the groups. Statistical analysis revealed that the physiological subscale score was higher in the physical fitness participants than in control participants (16 versus 15, p<0.005). None of the other LSS subscales significantly differed. There were significant differences in age (p<0.001), educational level (p<0.001), and monthly income (p