Anxiety Levels and Exercise Addiction in Higher Education Students Studying Sports Sciences During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the exercise addiction levels and pandemic-related anxiety states of the students studying in different departments of sports sciences during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.The sample of the study consisted of 525 randomly selected sports sciences students who actively continued their sports lives in the spring semester of the 2020-2021 academic year. In this study, the survey model, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used, and the study was designed as a descriptive study. Personal information form through which the demographic characteristics of the participants were questioned, Coronavirus Anxiety Scale developed by Lee (2021), and the Exercise Addiction Scale developed by Demir, Hazar, and Cicioglu (2018) was applied, and data were collected in the digital environment through Google Forms. SPSS 23.0 statistical package program was used, and independent t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) methods were applied in the analysis of the data.It was observed that 25.7% of the students had anxiety caused by COVID-19, and that all of the students had exercise addiction at the dependent group level (57.85±12.53). No difference was observed in the anxiety states according to gender and age variables; however, (p>.05) it was determined that there was a decrease in the anxiety level and an increase in exercise addiction as the age level increased. Anxiety levels of the students studying in the programs of Coaching Education (CE) and Physical Education and Sports Teaching (PEST) were significantly higher than the students studying in the departments of Recreation Education (RE) and Sports Management (SM) (p<.05), and the students with anxiety studying in the department of PEST had a higher level of exercise addiction compared to students in all other departments. As the year of study level of students with anxiety increased, their anxiety levels and exercise addiction also increased. Anxiety levels of the students involved in the team sports were high and these students had exercise addiction at a significant level. In addition, students involved in sports at a professional level were in the category of high-level exercise addiction compared to amateur athletes. It was observed that students who did not have SARS-CoV-2 pandemic-related anxiety were highly and significantly addicted to exercise compared to individuals with anxiety (p<0.000); however when the anxiety states were ignored, it was concluded that all sports science students had exercise addiction at the dependent group level during the pandemic period. © 2021, Ataturk Universitesi. All rights reserved.