This study aims to analyze participation motivation of the students studying in the department of Physical education and Sports teaching. The study population consists of 160 students from the Department of Physical Education and Sports Teaching in Kazim Karabekir Faculty of Education at Atatürk University in the 2019-2020 academic year. The study sample is 99 students out of 160 students by choosing the random sampling method. A form consisting of two parts has been used as a data collection tool in the study. In the first part of the data collection tool, there is a personal information form, including the students' age, gender, and sports information branch. In the second part, participation motivation questionnaire has been used. Normal distribution criteria have been controlled using Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests in the obtained data. Non-parametric tests have been used in the next stage's statistical analysis. While comparisons of gender and sports type have been fulfilled with the Mann Whitney-U test, the Kruskal Wallis test has been used for the age variable. Consequently, it has been observed that the most crucial reason directing students to sports is "skill development" and the least important reason is "friends". When looking at the values obtained from the Participation Motivation Questionnaire by gender, it is evident that there is no statistically significant difference according to the scores obtained by male and female students from the sub-dimensions of the scale.