Investigation of the effect of the attitudes and beliefs of adolescents and their parents on the aggression behaviours of adolescents

This study aims to create a set of data in order to find possible links between adolescents' violent behaviours and adolescents' and their families' beliefs and attitudes towards violence. Buss-Perry aggression scale (BPSS) was applied to record the aggression levels of adolescents, attitude towards violence (ATV) and belief in violence (BIV) scales were applied to evaluate the attitudes and beliefs of adolescents and their parents towards/in violence. The scale to measure the attitudes of adolescents and their parents was adapted to Turkish society from its original form. 413 adolescents aged 13-19 and their parents (408 mothers and 383 fathers) were included in the study. In the factor analysis of BIVS, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin value for adolescents and parents was found to be 0.776 and 0.779. The 20 items in the scale were classified under 5 factors for adolescents and 6 factors for parents with total variance rates of 55.039% and 62.096%, respectively. Cronbach Alpha value was determined as 0.776 for adolescents and 0.764 for the parents. According to the BPSS classification 41 (10%) adolesents had low, 321 (78.5%) had medium and 47 (11.5%) had high scores with a mean value of 2.56 ± 0.58. As the aggression score increased, the values of the scales increased, but only significant differences were observed in the scales of BIV and ATV in adolescents and ATV of their mothers. the Positive correlations (Pearson) were observed between all the scales, except those between BPSS and BIV scales for both mothers and fathers. The mean values of the scales in terms of the gender of the adolescents were found to be higher in males compared to females where significant differences were only observed in BIV and ATV scales for adolescents and ATV scale for mothers andBIV scales for fathers. It was found as the ages increase the mean values scales increases, but a significant difference in termsof the age groups was found only in the BPSS. In conclusion, it may be speculated that beliefs and attitudes of adolescents and their parents support their behavior towards violence, though not alone.