Evaluation of innovation skills of 7th grade primary school students

The purpose of this research is to determine the innovation skills of elementary school students. This study aims to determine the innovation skills of 7th grade students. The study was designed in the survey model. Data was collected utilizing a questionnaire consisting of 11 questions for personal information and the innovation scale. The innovation ability scale for Youth (Chell and Athay, 2009), was translated into Turkish and validity and reliability studies were done. The reliability of the scale was measured via Cronbach's alpha coefficient and was found as 0.86. For validity, confirmatory factor analysis was performed. The validity for language has benefited from the translation-back translation technique. The scale consists of 31 items and is in five-point Likert-type. The innovation scale was examined in five dimensions; Creativity, Leadership, Energy, Self-Efficacy and Risk Tendency. Data were obtained from 608 7th grade students out of 3069 in total in Efeler, the central district in Aydın, in the academic year of 2013-2014. Participants were randomly selected. To analyze the data; Frequency distributions, t-test and ANOVA test and Scheffe post hoc analysis of the test have been used. As a result of the study, according to the innovation skill levels compared with demographic characteristics of the participants, a significant difference was affected only by gender. According to the innovation scale questionnaire results, the highest of the sub-dimension average was that of the Energy sub-dimension, and the lowest average was found to be the Leadership sub-dimension. Within the sub-dimensions, the innovation scale did not vary according to the number of siblings, the place where a large part of life spent, parents' occupations; however, a significant difference was seen according to the gender, mother's occupation, parents' educational level, the number of the children in the family, financial status and the number of students in the class. The obtained results will contribute to the literature and may constitute data for subsequent studies.