A REVIEW OF THE PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS OF HIGH LEVEL COLLEGIATE ATHLETES FROM DIFFERENT BRANCHES

This research aims to examine the problem-solving skills of high-level collegiate athletes in terms of different variables such as branch, gender and years in sports. There were a total of 183 athletes, from 18 universities attending the interuniversitary finals, taking part in the research voluntarily: 84 female and 99 male athletes from volleyball, handball, athletism, swimming and futsal branches. The applied data collection tool for the research was the “Personal Information Form”, and the “Problem Solving Inventory ”, developed by Heppner and Peterson (1982) was used to determine the problem solving skills.The percent and frequency values were taken, and the t-test and analysis of variances (One Way ANOVA) were used for analyzing the data. The significance level sought was p 0.05. To sum up; a significant correlation has been identified in terms of the Problem Solving Inventory scores of high level collegiate athletes by the gender variable. The problem solving skills of male swimming and track and field branches were found to be higher than those of female athletes. The research did also look at the correlation between the variable of years in sports and the branch variable and the Problem Solving Inventory scores, but no meaningful significance has been identified.