Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi Spor Bilimleri Dergisi

Öz

Purpose: The aim of this study is to examine the communication skills and perceived stress levels of women who practice the pilates exercise method.
Method: The research group consists of 308 volunteer female participants. Personal information form, Communication Skills Scale and Perceived Stress Level Scale were applied
to the participants as data collection tools. The communication skills scale consists of 4 sub-
dimensions called Communication principles and basic skills, Self-Expression, Active Listening and Non-Verbal Communication, Willingness to Communicate, with 25 items in a
5-point Likert type, the validity and reliability study of which was conducted by Korkut and
Bugay (2014). For this study, the internal consistency coefficient for the overall scale was found .85, while the communication principles and basic skills were .79, self-expression .83,
active listening and non-verbal communication .79, and the willingness to communicate sub-
dimension .82. The perceived stress level scale used to measure the stress levels of the participants was developed by Kaya et al. (2019), it consists of 10 items it consists of a total of 10 items in a 5-point Likert type. 7 of the items with positive expressions are scored in reverse. For this study, the internal consistency coefficient for the overall scale was determined as .71. All statistical analyzes were performed with IBM SPSS version 21.0 software (IBM Corp. Released 2012. Armonk, NY, USA). Frequency and percentage, which are descriptive statistical methods for personal information, were used in the analysis of the data. Normality analysis was performed before comparing the variables. Since the Skewness and Kurtisos values were between -2 and +2, it was assumed that the variables showed a normal distribution (George and Mallery 2010). Accordingly, Independent-Samples T-Test was applied for 2-variable data at α = 0.05 significance level, and One-Way ANOVA test was applied for more than 2 variables. Pearson Correlation analysis was performed to measure the relationship between sub-dimensions.
Results: According to the results of the analysis, while a significant difference was determine between the sub-dimensions of marital status, monthly income, and communication skills due to exercise, no significant difference was found between age, weekly exercise duration, total years of exercise, and educational status. There was a significant difference between age, monthly income, exercise and perceived stress level. However, no significant difference was found between marital status, weekly exercise time, total years of exercise, and educational status. According to the Pearson correlation analysis, it was determined that there was a medium level correlation in the communication skills self-expression and willingness to communicate sub-dimensions, a high level correlation in the active listening and non-verbal communication sub-dimensions, and a negative medium-level correlation in the perceived stress level.
Conclusion: As a result, communication skills and perceived stress levels of women who practice pilates exercise method differ according to socio-demographic variables.