Examining the Impacts of Recreational Participation in Terms of Healthy Life Perception and Different Variables

Year 2022, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 86 - 99, 30.04.2022

Mert Erkan Ecem Türkmen Tolga Berkay Kesen Süleyman Munusturlar

Abstract

Recreational participation is the actions that aim at mental and physical regeneration in the leisure of individuals, as well as related to social, cultural, physiological and economic opportunities, determined by factors such as age, gender, economic status and social position. This study aimed to draw attention to the effects of participation in leisure activities on the healthy life of the individual with a holistic view rather than a single activity and group, by highlighting the diversity of recreational activities. In this study, in which the people of Eskisehir province formed the target population, the sample involved 405 people living in Eskisehir, all selected by simple random sampling method. The study used the ―Leisure Activity Participation Scale‖ (LAPS) developed by Şimşek and Çevik (2020). The Leisure Activity Participation Scale consists of eight subdivisions and 34 items: relaxing activity, developmental activity, socializing activity, activity with an attractive environment, productive activity, aesthetic activity, entertaining activity, and exciting activity. Participation of the partakers recreational activities was evaluated on a 5- point Likert-type scale. SPSS-23 (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) program was used for statistical analysis.
According to the Levene test results for making the decision to either apply parametric or non-parametric tests, the variances were homogeneous (p>0.05); and according to Kolmogorov-Smirnov test results, groups showed normal distribution (p>0.05). In the light of this information, Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis tests were used in order to determine whether the dependent variables differ compared to the independent variables. According to data obtained from the study; recreational participation was affected in all its dimensions especially by the health perception variable. It is possible to interpret this effect in favour of the increase in recreational participation in parallel with the increase in the perception of health. Furthermore, the gender variable had a great impact on recreational participation, following health perception, except for its socializing and activity with an attractive environment dimensions. In the gender variable, results were all in favour of women in all subscales and in the total recreational participation score with a significant difference. In addition to these, the educational status affected the relaxing and developmental dimensions of recreational participation in favour of increasing the educational level. There was no statistically significant effect of occupation and income variables on recreational participation.

Keywords

Leisure, Recreational Activity, Participation

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