Investigation of Mental Endurance Levels of Turkish Folk Dance Competition Athletes According to Various Variables

Folk dances are not only a form of cultural expression, but also represent a perfect combination of physical activity and coordination. In addition to being a cultural and artistic activity, the subject and purpose of this study is to examine the Mental Endurance Levels of the competition athletes performing folk dances, which are accepted as a sport branch, in terms of various variables. A total of 383 folk dance athletes, 216 women and 167 men, participated in this study, which is a descriptive research based on the Scanning model, one of the quantitative research methods, from 18 provinces as licensed in the teams competing in the "youth" category Turkish Championships organised by the Turkish Folk Dance Federation in the 2023-2024 season. In the study, "Mental Endurance Inventory in Sport" was used to determine the mental endurance levels of folk dance athletes. Independent Samples t-Test and One Way Anova from parametric tests were used in the measurements. According to the results of the research, it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference in favour of male athletes according to gender in the folk dance competition athletes participating in the study. While there was no significant difference according to the age variable, it was determined that there was a significant difference according to the year of doing sports. There was no significant difference between the groups according to the weekly training number variable.