SWOT Analysis of Extracurricular Activities and Determination of Their Importance by Analytic Hierarchy Process

This study aims to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and potential threats of extracurricular activities based on the opinions of teachers working in various branches at primary and secondary school levels, as well as to determine the importance levels of these factors. The research employed an exploratory sequential design. Initially, 11 teachers, selected through criterion sampling, completed an interview form regarding the positive and negative aspects, opportunities, and threats of extracurricular activities within the scope of the Delphi technique. Subsequently, the Analytic Hierarchy Process was applied using pairwise comparison forms. Among the dimensions of extracurricular activities, the most important factors were students’ multifaceted development among the strengths, potential negative impact on academic development among the weaknesses, support for students’ personal and academic development among the opportunities, and potential negative effects on students’ development among the threats. In terms of SWOT dimensions, the strengths of extracurricular activities were the most prominent, followed by opportunities. Threats and weaknesses received relatively lower importance ratings. In the context of practitioners, suggestions can be made, such as designing extracurricular activities aimed at enhancing students’ personal, social, and academic development. For future research, analyzing student and parent perspectives using the Analytic Hierarchy Process method is recommended.