Examination of the Relationship Between Attitudes Toward Physical Education and Sports and Empathic Tendency Levels Among Secondary School Students

This study aimed to examine the relationship between secondary school students’ attitudes toward physical education and sports and their emotional and cognitive empathic tendencies and to determine whether these variables differed according to gender, school type, income level, and sports branch. The study included 913 students, comprising 424 males and 489 females, who were selected through random sampling from five different public secondary schools in Tekirdağ, Türkiye, during the 2022–2023 academic year. Data were collected using a demographic information form, the Physical Education and Sports Attitude Scale (PESAS), and the Ka-Si Empathic Tendency Scale–Adolescent Form (KA-SI ETS-A). Independent-samples t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, post-hoc comparisons, and Pearson correlation analysis were used to analyze the data. Male students had significantly higher attitudes toward physical education and sports than female students, whereas female students had significantly higher emotional and cognitive empathy scores than male students. Differences in attitude and empathic tendency scores were observed according to school type, income level, and sports branch, although the pattern of these differences varied across the outcomes examined. Sports High School students had higher attitude scores than students attending the other school types, while their cognitive empathy scores were significantly higher only than those of Imam Hatip High School students. PESAS scores showed a statistically significant but very weak positive correlation with emotional empathy (r = .072, p = .031) and a weak positive correlation with cognitive empathy (r = .190, p < .001). In conclusion, secondary school students’ attitudes toward physical education and sports and their empathic tendency levels differed according to selected demographic characteristics, and positive but weak relationships were found between these variables. The findings should be interpreted in terms of associations and group differences rather than causal relationships.