Browsing by Author "Cornér, Timo"

Research’s (Eldar 2006) have shown that social skills are connected to physical activity and involving in sports maintains close relationships between people and offers opportunities to create new relationships. Being involved in organized team sports has shown to have positive effects in children’s peer relations. Social skills are a major factor when making friends. This study tries to solve the connection between 5th and 6th graders hobbies and social skills in Viikki, Teacher´s Training School. The research problems were: - Is there a connection between being engaged in team sports and having good social skills? - Does girls rate themselves higher in social skills than boys? The survey was held in Helsinki, Viikki’s Teacher Training school and the answers were collected from 5th and 6th graders. The survey had two sections: Social Skills self-evaluation and hobbies. An-swers were collected from total of 109 students which includes 39,4 % (n=43) fifth graders and 60,6 % (n=66) sixth graders. 51,4 % (n=56) were girls and 48,6 % (n=53) boys. Collected answers were uploaded in SPSS – statistics program which was also used to get results with different methods. The study showed that engaging in team sports does not have a statistical connection to social skills. However it was shown that gender played a part in social skills. Girls got higher scores in social skills than boys.