Spor ve Rekreasyon Araştırmaları Dergisi

Öz

The aim of this research is to examine the difficulties faced by swimmers with physical disabilities in participating in sports and their levels of passion in sports. The relational screening model was used in the study. The participants were included in the study using the appropriate sampling method and the sample group consisted of a total of 26 physically disabled swimmers, 12 female and 14 male. In addition to the personal information form, the Difficulties in Participation in Sports Scale developed by Yılmaz et al. (2021) was used to determine the levels of difficulties in participating in sports, and the Passion in Sports Scale developed by Sigmundsson et al. (2020) and adapted to Turkish by Özdayı et al. (2021) was used to measure the participants' levels of passion for success. Percentage and frequency values were used to determine the socio-demographic characteristics of the individuals included in the study, the skewness and kurtosis values of the data were examined, and it was determined that they did not show a normal distribution. In this context, the Mann Whitney- U test and the Kruskall Wallis test, which are non-parametric tests, were applied. Spearman correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship between the scale sub-dimensions, and cronbach’s alpha test was used to determine the internal consistency coefficients of the scales. According to the analysis results, no significant difference was found between the participants' gender, duration of swimming, national team participation and weekly training duration and EBSKÖZÖ sub-dimensions. A significant difference was found between NGO and national team participation. While a significant relationship was found between age and scale sub-dimensions, a significant relationship was found between the passion scale in sports and the awareness sub-dimension. As a result, the levels of difficulty in participating in sports and the passion levels in sports in physically disabled swimmers differ according to socio-demographic variables. According to the research results, it is necessary to focus on common needs when creating sports policies for disabled athletes. Rather than the past experiences of athletes, structural obstacles that individuals encounter and factors affecting motivation should be taken into consideration.