THE ATTITUDES OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS TOWARDS SPORTS: ATTITUDE AND METAPHORICAL PERCEPTION

The reactions and values that individuals possess towards objects or situations reflect their attitudes. A metaphor is to describe a situation or object by establishing an analogy to another situation or object. The aim of this study is to examine the attitudes and perceptions of undergraduate students studying at various faculties towards sports. The present study, in which a mixed method design was used, was conducted with undergraduate students of Gazi University in the 2017-2018 academic year. In this context, the sample of the study was comprised of a total of 481 (241 female, 240 male) undergraduate students studying at various departments, such as Physical Education Teaching, Banking and Insurance, Political Science and Public Administration, Law, Statistics, Finance, Chemical Engineering, Banking, Conservatory, and Psychological Counseling and Guidance (PCG). Data collection tools were "Demographic Information Form" developed by the researchers, "The Sports-Oriented Attitude Scale" developed by Koçak (2014), and "semi-structured form" prepared by researchers to collect qualitative data. In the analysis of the data, frequency, arithmetic mean, and standard deviation values were calculated and t-test and ANOVA were applied to the quantitative data. Besides, content analysis was applied to the qualitative data. Significant positive correlations were found between the subdimensions of the attitudes of university students towards sports and age. It was found that the subdimensions of the attitudes toward sports showed significant differences in favor of female participants, and the subdimensions of psychosocial development and mental development were found to be significantly different in favor of the students’ of departments of teaching. There were significant positive correlations between the subdimensions of the attitudes of university students towards sports and age. In the context of the qualitative data of the study, it was discovered that metaphors obtained from the participants were found to be clustered under the categories as life source, benefit provider, value, food, delighting, professional association, nature, addiction, and necessity. It was concluded that the attitudes of university students towards sports were moderate. It was also determined that metaphors for sports were often composed of positive ones