THE LEVELS OF DEMOCRATIC AND SCIENTIFIC VALUES OF 8TH GRADE SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

Values are the guiding patterns of behavior that ensure the integrity of a society. In order for the individual to be a part of the society to which they belong, these behavior patterns should be transferred. Family, school and society play a role in the transfer of values. The aim of this study is to determine the degree of democratic and scientific values of 8th grade students in Tunceli. In order to determine the students’ values arithmetical means and standard deviations were used. The Democratic and Scientific Values Scale and demographic information form developed by Akbaş (2004) were used to determine the values. In Tunceli, 8th grade students of the 2018-2019 academic year constitute the universe of the research, while 245 students studying in four primary schools make up the sample. In the research, SPSS package program was used to make statistical calculations. As a result of the applied statistical calculations, the effects of variables such as school, gender, education levels of parents and economic status of the family were examined. In order to determine whether these variables show normal distribution, normality analysis was performed on the data of the variables using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. As a result of the analysis, it was seen that the scientific values scale showed normal distribution, while the democratic values scale did not show a normal distribution. Therefore, non-parametric tests were used in the analysis of the sub-problems of the democratic values scale. In addition, as a result of the reliability analysis, the Cronbach's Alpha value of the democratic values scale was found to be .83, and the Cronbach's Alpha value of the scientific values scale was found to be .84. As a result of the research, a significant difference was found in the gender variable in scientific and democratic values. In the school variable, only a significant difference was observed in democratic value scores. Parents' education level and income level variables did not cause a significant difference on Democratic and Scientific value scores. The significant difference in the opinions of the participants was tested at the .05 level.