Fair Play Perception of Professional Volleyball Players

The pressure to succeed created on athletes by external factors such as fans, media, political structures, sponsorships, and coaches increases this pressure of the necessity of success. In this context, the aim of this study is to reveal the meanings attributed to the concept of fair play by professional volleyball players through metaphors. A total of 39 professional volleyball players, 27 men and 12 women who played professionally in the top leagues in Turkey in the 2022-2023 season, participated in the study. Phenomenology design, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study. A form consisting of two parts, created by consulting the researcher and experts, was used to obtain the data. The first part includes participants demographic information, while the second part aims to determine volleyball players perceptions of fair play by completing the expression Fair play is like/similar to... because... The data were analyzed using content analysis technique. The analysis process was carried out by examining and coding the individual metaphors numbered from 1 to 39, looking at the relationships between the metaphors and the code list of the meanings expressed by them, and reaching the most appropriate categories to make the data meaningful. When athletes perspectives were examined, it was concluded that the created metaphors were grouped under the themes of being an honesty element, being a respect element, being a belief element, being a character element, and being a collaboration/teamwork element. It is believed that fair play education to be given from the early years of sports, rewarding positive behaviors, and media focusing on this issue and sharing related content will contribute to the widespread adoption of fair play behavior.