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.