DOES EMPATHY DIFFER BY GENDER? RESEARCH ON CHILD ATHLETES

Abstract

This study intends to investigate the empathy skills in sportschildren with regard to gender. The study group comprises 240 children selected randomly from various clubs in Ankara, Tokat, Sivas and Konya. 53.2% of the total number is female and 46.8% is male. When the sports age of the group with a mean age of 14.32 is examined, it can be seen that 30.2% have been doing sports for 1-2 years, 40.3% have been doing sports for 3-4 years and 17.3% have been doing sports for 5-6 years. The study group is distributed into branches, with 29.5% pertaining to volleyball, 30.4% Football 48.5, and 21.1% to basketball. In the study, 'Empathy Scale for Children' developed by Bryant (1982) and adapted to Turkish by Yüksel (2004) was used as data collection tool. The frequency, percentage distributions and the mean values of the sub-dimensions of the scales were calculated. Independent Samples T-test was used to determine the empathy levels of the sportschildren. When the findings were examined, it was seen that the empathy levels of the sportschildren differed according to gender and this difference was statistically significant in favor of girls (p=.00). As a result, the activities aiming to improve the sportspeople’s taking roles and perspectives along with empathetic thinking skills should be included in the process of creating empathetic people thus empathetic sensitivity should be increased.  

Keywords: Children, Empathy, Gender, Sports