Does 12-Week Latin Dance Training Affect the Self-Confidence of the University Students ?

In this research, it is aimed to investigate the effect of 12-week Latin dance training on the self confidence of university students. This research was conducted with a total of 60 students, including 30 students as control and 30 students as working group. 33-item self-confidence scale developed by Akin (2007) was applied to both control and working group. Latin dance training was carried out once a week (2 hours) for a total of 24 hours, in 12 weeks. SPSS 16.0 was used for the evaluation of the data obtained in the study. Percetage, frequency, Paired Sample and Independent t-test were used for the analysis of the data. When post-test scores of self-confidence were evaluated, score of working group was found to be statistically significant compared to control group. According to the result of the research, it might be said that 12-week Latin dance training had increased the self confidence of the participants.


Introduction
In the fields of exercise and health studies, it is mentioned that exercise and regular exercise support the protection of physical and psychological values of individuals positively (Asci, 2002;Dishman & Jackson, 2000;Fox, 1997;Granacher et al., 2012).Especially, effect of regular exercise on individuals' psychological parameters attracted much attention, thus many studies has been conducted on this subject.Many studies examining the relationship between psychological variables and regular physical activity were conducted by the researchers, such as Dimeo et al. (2001) about depression, Martinsen (2008) about anxiety, Salmon (2001) about stress, Fox (2000), self-confidence, Ozdemir et al. (2010), social physical anxiety, Akpinar et al. (2011) about group cohesion.
While self-confidence was defined as self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977(Bandura, , 1997) ) and perceived competence (Harter, 1982) conceptually ;Feltz (1988) defined self-confidence as "individual's belief on performing a activity successfully and trust on individual's own judgement, ability, strength and decision, rather than a common feature" (p.423).Self-efficacy theory developed by Bandura (1977) within the frame of social-cognitive theory was usually used as theoretical basis of researches carried out in various areas of self-confidence.Self-sufficiency is related not to the person's skills, but is associated with the assessment what one can do within his/her skills (Feltz, 1992).For example, an individual can have confidence in his/her skills in academic experience, but also a high level of anxiety in terms of self-expression in social situations.Individual's judgement on what they can do personally, has a critical role on determination of activity selection, how much effort would be needed to fulfill this activity, how much she/he would need to struggle to overcome the difficulties, the way of thinking and emotional responses (Bandura, 1977).According to Bandura's (1982) social-cognitive theory, self-efficacy levels of individuals affect their performance via emotion and cognition, directly and indirectly.
Self-confidence has many definitions on the literature.Some of the definitions of self-confidence on the literatures are as followed; confidence is one's ability to succeed or the state of the general feeling of competency (Mahoney & Chapman, 2004).According to Weinberg and Gould (2003), self-confidence is the individual's belief that he could perform an expected or a desired behavior.It is also described as individual's belief on performing a necessary action that is in accordance with his/her partial capacity and capability.Self-confidence is a belief and performing an action, a movement or a business successfully (Vealey, 2004).Level of self-confidence of individuals, high or low, is important in terms of determining their performance on the activity or duty.Napoli et al. (1992) stated the characteristics of high and low self-confidence as follows: the characteristics of high self-confidence are being open to the opportunity to take part in the emerging experience in spite of error risk, doing the activity without the need to prove just because they enjoy doing it (sports, learning a new skill, etc.), taking on the responsibility without making excuses or others to blame, accepting strengths and success of his/her own and others, accepting the personal power of an individual without abusing and trying to guide them, focusing on the quality of the life experience (friendship, etc.), not quantity, enjoying the teamwork, accepts the value of teamwork in the development of interpersonal relationships and in the fulfillment of a job, finding a balance in life (business, entertainment, loneliness, etc.).The characteristics of high self-confidence are inability to accept constructive criticism and usage of this critism for the development of her failure, incompetence in decision-making and realisation of creative values, complying with certain established rules, inability to take risks that could lead to error, failure in change, being stuck to the same food, environment, behavior, etc., inability to focus on own or people's strength, tendency to live the success of others (hero admiration), tendency to give importance to external appearance (dating with the most attractive person in campus, using the flashy car, etc.), tendency to be excessively obligate on the issues such as cleaning, eating, being extremely competitive (obligation to win at everything and be in front of everyone to feel important), tendency to see losing situation and being loser as a confirmation of personal value, tendency to excessive criticism (finding mistakes), tendency to be a workaholic to show others how valuable they are and to prove themselves.
Self-confidence is leading factor of the factors affecting people's life, in terms of success in many activity and occupation.Generally, the measure of what people could do is associated with the concept of self-confidence.Moreover, children with higher self-confidence are claimed to be more ambitious, independent, and creative than others (Pervin & John, 2001).
In addition to sedentary individuals, the concept of self-confidence is also important in individuals who are engaged in active sports and can affect the performance of athletes from various aspects.Thomas et al. (2011) defined strong sport confidence as showing psychological and environmental resistance and durability to challenges in the competitive sport and maıntaining this positive belief.Self-confidence is an essential tool for athletes and coaches for sport success.Studies showed that self-confidence was the most influential cognitive determinants of athlete's performance (Moritz et al., 2000;Craft et al., 2003;Woodman & Hardy, 2003).A meta-analysis of self-confidence showed that relationship of self-confidence with performance seems to be much more engaged than with cognitive anxiety.A positive correlation between performance and self-confidence is stated in the most of the researches (Woodman & Hardy, 2003).Self-confidence also influences the athletes' participation and continuance in sports.For example, athletes who continue to wrestle have higher confidence levels than the ones quitted wrestling.It was seen that athletes with high self-confident tend to choose challenging tasks of more than the ones with low self-confident.Athletes with high self-confidence are more productive, more successful to overcome the difficulties, to achieve set goals and have motivation compared to those with low self-confidence.In addition, self-confidence has an important engagement with concentration and decision making process (Vealey, 2009).
It is known that a person's level of self-confidence, especially in young people, has either positive or negative impact on his school life.In this regard, it will be beneficial to increase the confidence level of young people to succeed.Individuals who do sports regularly were found to have higher level of self confidence (Adilogullari et al., 2013).Furthermore, different sources in the literature stated that physical exercise and dance had the positive effects on the psychological parameters of individuals (Asci, 2002;Ozdemir et al., 2010;Williams & Cash, 2001;Lindwall & Lindgren, 2005) and it can be said that the self-confidence is key for the athletes to succeed in sports competitions or social life.In addition, there are very little study conducted about the effect of Latin dance for increase of the confidence level of youngsters.Answer to the question "What would be the effect of Latin dance training on university students self-confidence?" is among the objectives of the research.

Participants
Working group of the research consisted of 15 men (20.80 ± 2.14 years) and 15 women (20.00 ± 1.81 years) from different departments of Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University.Average age of the participants is 20.4 ± 1.99 years.Control group of the research consisted of 15 men (20.00 ± 1.71 years) and 15 women (20.67 ± 1.66 years) from different departments of Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University.Average age of the participants in the control group is 20.19 ± 1.70 years.

Materials
To obtain the data of the study, 33-item Self-Confidence Scale developed by Akin (2007) was used.Scale consists of two dimensions, including internal self-confidence and external self-confidence.In this Self-Confidence Scale, internal self-confidence items are 4-25-32-17-10-30-12-3-19-5-21-27-9-23-1-7-15, external self-confidence items are 6-31-20-29-16-14-22-11-18-33-2-28-26-13-8-24.Self-confidence is divided into two groups as internal confidence and external confidence.Inner confidence is feelings and thoughts of the individual who is satisfied with himself/herself, at peace with himself/herself and identifies with himself/herself.External confidence is attitude and behavior of the individual which demonstrates satisfaction and confidence with himself/herself.In addition, there are elements constituting internal confidence and external confidence.Elements of internal confidence are self-confidence, self-love, self-knowledge, defining certain goals and positive thinking.Elements of external confidence are communication and controlling emotions (Akagündüz, 2006).Classification scale is a quinary Likert-type classification.Akin (2007) has found the reliability value of the scale he developed as 0.94 for the whole scale; inner self-confidence was found to be 0.97 in inner self confidence dimension and 0.87 in external self confidence dimension.

Procedure
Prior to the 12-week period of research, the participants were asked to complete the self-confidence scale as the pre-test.After the 12-week implementation phase, the same participants were again asked to complete the self-confidence scale as the post-test.The participants have attended Latin dance training, given by the researcher, once a week (2 hours) for a total of 120 hours.The results collected with self-confidence scale were analyzed with statistical package (SPSS.16,0) and interpreted.First of all, descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentage distributions) of demographic information and data related other questions were performed.Paired Sample t-test was used to determine the significance of differences of repetitive measurement of the pre-and post-test and independent T-test was used to determine the significance of differences between the individual groups.The significance level was considered as p < 0.05.

Conclusion and Discussion
This study aimed to investigate the effect of 12-week Latin dance training on self-confidence levels of sedentary university students.While there was not a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores of the participants attending Latin dance training (p > 0.05), there was a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores of external self-confidence and overall self-confidence (p < 0.05) (Table 1).Olesch (1994) had performed a total of 24 hours of dance lessons per week with 37 women who had mild comprehension problems, to understand the effect of dance on the self-confidence.Three different ready scale were used to determine the current self-confidence as a pre-test.At the end of the study, self-confidence of the participants were found to have significant difference in post-test, compared to the pre-test.Theodorako and Zervas (2003) investigated the effects of music teaching methods including creative physical activities and traditional music teaching methods on self-confidence levels of elementary school students aged between 11-12 years.In this study, self-confidence were discussed in five dimensions: mental competence, social acceptability, athletic competence, physical appearance and behavior management.At the end of the three-month study, both procedures had been shown to increase their self-confidence.However, motion-based music education has appeared to be more effective on self-confidence, compared to traditional music teaching method in terms of mental competence, social acceptability and physical appearance.Newnam (2001) conducted a study examining the effects of dance activities on self-efficacy and locomotion of trainable mental retarded children.The study was conducted with children who were on 3rd and 4th grade and test-control group design was used.The experimental group consisted of 876 people including 8 disabled children, while the control group consisted of 628 people, including 5 disabled children.Control group continued to their physical education dance without dance and rhythm activities, while experimental group took dance classes including basic elements of movement and rhythm, carried out by researchers.Self-efficacy was measured with "The Morgan-Jinks Student Efficacy Scale" and dancing ability were measured with "Data Based Dance Skills Placement Test".At the end of the study, post-test results of both variables in the control group showed no change compared to the pre-test results.In the experimental group, there was an increase in self-efficacy, but it was not significant.The significant increase was observed in the dancing skills.In his study, Tokin (2008) showed that creative dance activities had made significant differences on the self-confidence of music teachers.Even there are age differences between the working groups of our study and studies on the literature, it was seen that levels of self-confidence were increased with dance activities.There were no significant differences between pre-test and post-test scores of external and overall self confidence levels of control group (p > 0.05).
Table 2 shows that the confidence score did not change significantly according to the gender of individuals participating in the study (experimental and control group) (p > 0.05).Riley (1984) has examined the effects of creative dance program on physical self-confidence, body depictions and problem solving of nine-year-old children.For data collection, forementioned tests were applied to 30 students and also observations and interviews were conducted.Tests and interviews conducted after 12 hours of class, showed that girls developed higher self-confidence on creative dance classes, but there was no significant difference between pre-and post-tests on body depiction.In the literature, there are limited comparison studies which use self-confidence and gender as variable.However, there are studies which used different psycho-social parameters to show the results depending on gender.In their study where the levels of being satisfied were investigated as Social Physical Anxiety and Body Image, Çepikkurt and Coşkun (2010) showed that female dancers have demonstrated more social physical concerns compared to male dancers.
According to the results of the study, it might be said that Latin dance training developed the self-confidence of college students.For future work, widening sample group, implementation in different age groups and investigation of how Latin dance influences on other parameters except self-confidence can be helpful to see whether it improves those parameters or not.

Table 1 .
The comparison of pre-test and post-test mean scores of the confidence level of working and control group

Table 2 .
Comparison of the confidence level of the working and control group according to gender