Determining the Healthy Lifestyle and Social Appearance Anxiety Levels of Individuals Who Participate in Sports

In this study, it was aimed to examine the relationship between healthy lifestyle levels and social appearance anxiety of individuals engaged in sports. The scope of the research consists of a total of 198 people who do regular sports, which were chosen as random activities in a gym in the Kartal district of Istanbul province. A personal information form was used for socio-demographic information, “Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors Scale II” was used to determine healthy lifestyles, and “Social Appearance Anxiety Scale” was used to determine social appearance anxiety. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS 29.0 package program (IBM SPSS Corp.; Armonk, NY, USA). Since the data sets were normally distributed, frequency and mean values were utilized. In the analysis of the data, independent-samples t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to determine the differences between independent variables and dependent variables. The relationships between the variables were evaluated with Pearson correlation analysis, and the effects on social appearance anxiety were examined with simple and multiple linear regression analyses. The significance level was accepted as p < .05. According to the findings of the analyses, individuals with a high level of healthy lifestyle habits have lower levels of social appearance anxiety. In addition, it was found that female participants had higher levels of health responsibility and nutrition than male participants. Research findings reveal that healthy living habits can reduce individuals’ social appearance anxiety. Cite this article as: Özcan, B., & Çelik, M. (2026). Determining the healthy lifestyle and social appearance anxiety levels of individuals who participate in sports. Research in Sports Science, 16, 0044, doi:10.5152/rss.2026.25044.