Investigation of the relationships between the perception of school life quality and the variables of attachment to friends and empathic classroom atmosphere among elementary school students

This study examines the relationship between the perception of school life quality and variables as attachment to friends and empathic classroom atmosphere in primary school students.Research population includes sixth, seventh and eighth grade students which proceeds their primary education from Adana central districts (Seyhan and Yüreğir) in 2008-2009 school year. Three schools, which were identified as lower, middle and upper social economic status by unbiased cluster exemplification method, is selected from the research population and one class is chosen from each school randomly. These three classes which were selected from determined schools build up the sample of the research.The research is conducted on 298 students is 106 of them from the school which has low socio-economic status, 112 of them from the school which has middle socio-economic status and, 80 of them from the school which has high socio-economic status.Data were gathered by three different tools in this research. These are ?Quality of School Life Scale? (QSLS) (Sarı, 2007), ?Empathic Classroom Atmosphere Scale? (ECAS) (Özbay and Şahin, 1996, 2000), ?The Invertory of Peer Attachment? (IPA) (Hortaçsu and Oral; Cited in: Saçar, 2007).In evaluating the findings in being significant or not 05 meaningfulness level is determined as the criteria. It is identified before these are done that the sample meets the premises for ?linearity? and ?normality?.In data analysis, descriptive statistics were examined by means of SPSS 11.5 package software. Furthermore, independent group t-test and multiple regression analysis were used.The results of the study indicate that the relation between the perception of school life quality and variables of attachment to friends and empathic classroom atmosphere in primary school students is meaningful at 01 level. According to findings of QSLS school life quality level in primary schools in Adana central districts is above average accordingly in both total points and sub dimensions. In social economical relationships, perception of school life quality in students of upper socio- economic status schools is higher the perception of school life qualities of lower and middle socio-economic status school students. According to findings of the inquiry, the most important precursor variable is attachment to friends. The order of importance in precursor variables on perception of school life quality is as attachment to friends and empathic classroom atmosphere.