An Investigation of the Digital Gaming Attitudes of the Faculty of Sports Sciences Students

Nowadays, digital games have become a part of the daily lives of individuals, and accordingly, the virtual world phenomenon, especially in the young population, has emerged. This phenomenon causes digital game users to experience other worlds as well as their real lives. The experiences of individuals through games in the virtual environment, on the one hand, provide link and communication, on the other hand, they distance them from concrete concepts of the real world. This study aimed to examine the digital game-playing attitudes of students studying at the faculties of sports sciences. The research group consisted of 911 students (415 females, 45.6%; 496 males, 54.4%) studying at the faculties of sports sciences in Konya Selcuk University, Ankara Gazi University, and Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa. This study conducted in the period of November-December, 2019, and all students voluntarily participated in the study. The “Digital Gaming Attitude Scale (DGAS)” developed by Tekkurşun Demir and Mutlu Bozkurt (2019) was used to collect data in the study. This scale consists of 18 items and three sub-dimensions (cognitive, affective, and behavioral). Descriptive statistics (frequency, arithmetic mean, standard deviation), independent sample t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Tukey multiple comparison tests were used in the analysis of the data. The arithmetic mean of the sub-dimensions was 15.41 ± 3.38 for cognitive, 15.72 ± 3.74 for emotional, and 23.58 ± 7.34 for behavioral. Statistical analysis of the data was made through the SPSS 19.0 program and the significant difference level of the values was accepted as p <0.05. The analysis results showed that when the digital gaming attitude scale was evaluated according to gender, the mean score scores of male students in all cognitive, affective, and behavioral sub-dimensions were significantly higher than female students.