The effect of participation in sports on happiness and loneliness: an analysis of university students during the pandemic


 This study aimed to assess whether students who were involved in sports felt happier
and less lonely than their peers who were not involved. The sample comprised 549
students who were enrolled in a provincial state university in Turkey, and who
volunteered to take part in the study. The survey was comprised of two parts. The first
part contained questions to identify gender and the extent of the student’s active and
passive participation in sport. Active participation was defined by the status of licensed
athlete. The second part comprised the Oxford Happiness questionnaire compact
version and the UCLA Loneliness Scale-III. Before the analysis, the Levene test was
conducted to confirm the homogeneity of the variances. After determining that the
variances were homogeneous, four two-way ANOVAs were carried out to test the
hypotheses that students’ active and passive involvement in sport was associated with
lower levels of loneliness and higher levels of happiness and that this effect was
significantly different for males and females. The results confirmed that both licensed
athletes and those who had greater levels of passive involvement in sport reported less
loneliness and higher levels of happiness. However, this outcome applied irrespective
of the student’s gender.

