Investigation of Students' Bullying Behavior in Terms of Sport Participation

Bullying, which is seen as an increasing problem in schools today, is defined as "a type of aggression resulting in deliberate and constant disturbance in which one person or a group of people against others who are less powerful and unable to defend themselves. Participation in sport activities which is seen as an important tool in the holistic development of children, is an important issue that needs to be examined whether it has an impact on bullying behaviours. With this in mind, it was aimed to examine the bullying behaviour tendencies of secondary school students in terms of participation to the sport. The research was carried out with descriptive survey model. Purposeful sampling method was used for obtaining data from non-probabilistic sampling methods. Participants are 300 middle school 6th, 7th and 8th grade students in Manisa. Bullying Behaviour Tendency Scale (BBTC) developed by Satan (2006) was used as data collection tool. Independent samples t-test and one-way analysis of variance were used for data analysis. The results showed that the bullying average points of the students who not participate sport were significantly higher than the licensed sport participants. Similarly, the analysis of the data according to gender variable showed that the total score average of the girls who not participate sports is significantly higher than the girls who participate sportive activities regularly. As indicated by the results of this study, encouraging students to sportive activities is thought to be effective in reducing unwanted behaviours such as peer bullying