vol.4, no.2, pp.17-25, 2015 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)
The aim of this study was to investigate whether application of regular sportive activities for 12 weeks has an
effect on depression levels of children or not. Moreover, depression level of the research group was also
examined in terms of age and branch of sports. The research group was constituted of 80 students including 40
students as application group who live in Yozgat Children's Shelter in city center of Yozgat as well as 40
students from Yozgat Cumhuriyet Secondary School and Yozgat Industrial Vocational High School (control
group). The research was figured as test model with pre-test and post-test control groups. Regular sports
education was given to the students in application group for 2 hour 3 days a week throughout 12 weeks. Before
and after 12-week period, Children Depression Scale (Beck, 1979) was applied to both application and control
groups. For statistical analysis of the data, SPSS 15.0 software program was used whereas Independent and
Paired samples t test together with One-way anowa test were applied for comparisons. This study was tested
for 0.05 and 0.01 significance levels. It was determined that there was a significant difference in terms of
statistics when averages of pre-test and post-test grades of students participated in the research as application
group (p<0.05). As a result, it was indicated in this research which was aimed to investigate depression levels of
children between 13 and 17 years old that sports activities done by application group resulted in significant
difference in depression levels of children. In this regard, it can be concluded that sports positively affected
depression levels of children between 13 and 17 years old.