Investigation of Social Skill Levels of Students in Physical Education and Sport Department

The purpose of this research is to compare physical education and sports teaching department students’ social skill levels according to their grade levels in a university. 192 volunteer students from two different universities (male = 110, female = 82; 39 1st grade, 47 2nd grade, 52 3rd grade and 54 4th grade) participated. Developed by Kocayörük (2000), the Social Skills Scale was used for collecting the data. For data analysis, exploratory factor analysis, descriptive statistics and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed. Statistical anaysis showed mean differences among grades levels but these differences were not statistically meaningful [F (3,189) = 2:46; p = .064)]. Looking mean differences among grade levels (for 1st grade X = 3.43, SD = .44; for 2nd grade X = 3.40, SD = .25; for 3rd grade X = 3.33, SD = .34 and for 4th grade X = 3.50, SD = .38), it was found high social skill mean scores of physical educatşon and sport department students. One of the reasons can be sports’ positive contribution on the social skills of individuals. In future research, therefore, can be proformed to examine social skill differences between students who are active, regularly engaged in sports and inactive students. In addition, different scales of social skills can be used in future studies.