EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOAL COMMITMENT AND CAREER AWARENESS IN ATHLETES

Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate and evaluate the relationship between goal commitment and career awareness in athletes. In this sense, the relationships between different age groups, individual and team athletes, sports science faculties and "Goal commitment and Career development" are investigated. It can be said that goal commitment is important in athletes to be successful in their sports career. In this sense, it is useful to study the goal commitment and career awareness of student-athletes in detail. This study was designed with a quantitative research method using the survey model. The survey model refers to the process of describing a situation using scientific methods. In this sense, the relationship between two different variables was studied. A total of 385 subjects, 229 males and 156 females, among the student athletes of the Department of Sport Sciences participated in the research. In this study, the "Student Athlete Career Awareness Inventory" developed by Bozyiğit et al. (2022) and the "Goal Commitment Scale" adapted into Turkish by Şenel and Yıldız (2016) were used as instruments for data collection. SPSS 22 program was used to analyze the research data. According to the research results, although there were no significant differences in gender, career development self-efficacy, athlete identity, sports supporters, and goal commitment, it was found that men experienced barriers to career development at a higher level. Depending on the department in which the student athletes are educated, the physical education department was found to have a lower score related to "athlete identity," one of the sub-dimensions of the mean scores for career and goal commitment, compared to other departments. Another finding of the study is that when the relationship scores between "Goal Commitment" and "Career Development" were examined, a positive relationship was found between "Career Development Obstacles" and "Goal Commitment". Consequently, these results could be due to the interaction of multiple factors. Further research could provide a more detailed explanation by considering larger sample groups, more sensitive measurement instruments, and other variables.