The examination of the level of assertiveness of the children in the light of parental behaviour towards children and some other variables

The purpose of this study is to analyse whether the level of assertiveness of the children in the age group 11-14 differentiates or not according to variables, such as parental behaviour, the gender, the education level of the parents and the income level. The target group of the research is consisted of children who are attainting the 2nd level of the secondary school in Gültepe and Levent districts of Istanbul. The children were selected through a random sampling method. The sample is composed 100 children, 52 of whom were girls and 48 were boys. In this research, the Personal Information Form developed by the researcher, the Rathus Assertiveness Inventory, which was developed by Rathus with the aim of quantifying the level of assertiveness of the children (1973) and translated to Turkish by Voltan (1980), and the "Parental Attitude Scale" developed by Kuzgun and Eldeleklioglu with the aim of assessing the parental behaviour towards children (2005) were the main instruments used as regards to data collection. The "survey model" has been applied in this research. The data collected during the research has been analysed by the SPSS software. When comparing quantitative data, the Independent Sample t-Test has been used to compare the difference in the parameters between two groups, whereas the Anova Test has been used to compare groups more than two. While a positive correlation can be observed between the level of assertiveness of the children and democratic parenting; there is a negative correlation between the level of assertiveness of the children and parents perceived as adopting an authoritarian approach. Additionally a positive correlation was not found between protective and requester parental behaviour and the level of assertiveness of the children at the end of study. In this study, children who consider that their parents adopt democratic approach have higher assertiveness points than those who perceived their parents as an authoritarian family. No correlation has been observed between the level of assertiveness of the children and parental behaviour when taking into account the gender of the children. While a significant correlation was found between the level of assertiveness of the children and the education level of their mother, the study shows that there is no correlation between the level of assertiveness of the children and the education level of their father. Moreover, the level of assertiveness of the children did not change according to the income level of their family. The results obtained from this study have been discussed and analysed in the light of the existing literature. The researcher who conducted this study also presented her suggestions on possible area of research that can be explored in future studies. Key Words : Assertiveness, Parental Behaviour, Level of Assertiveness of the Children