The relationship between the interpersonal communication skills and conflict management strategies of primary school administrators

SUMMARYThe purpose of the study was to define the relationship between the interpersonalcommunication skills and conflict management strategies of the primary schooladministrators.The study was modelled as a survey search. The population of the study consists of 369primary school administrators and 3980 teachers working in state primary schools in thecenter of Antalya in 2005-2006 educational years. The data gathered from 90 administratorquestionnaires and 486 teacher questionnaires was evaluated in the study.A questionnaire developed by the researcher was used in the study for gathering data onthe interpersonal communication skills and conflict management strategies of primary schooladministrators. The questionnaire consists of three parts. The first part of the questionnaireaims to collect date on the personal information of the participants. The second part consistsof items for defining the degree of the interpersonal communication skills of primary schooladministrators. The last part includes items on defining conflict management styles of primaryschool administrators.Within-items reliability test was done using the Cronbach?s reliability correlationanalysis. The Cronbach?s Alpha value of the interpersonal communication skills part is r=0,96. The Cronbach?s Alpha value of the conflict management strategies part is r=0,85. A fivepoint Likert Scale ranging from ?never? to ?always? was used in the study. An alpha level of0.05 was set for all the analyses. Specific descriptive analyses which were conducted tocalculate the data included percentage, frequency, means, standard deviation, t-test and one-way ANOVA for unrelated sampling, Pearson's correlation coefficient, multiple regressionanalysis. In case the assumptions of parametric tests were not satisfied, Mann Whitney U testand Kruskal Wallis test were used.As the result of the study, interpersonal communication skills competencies of theadministrators were found high according to the views of both administrators and teachers.However, administrators? views on their own interpersonal communication skills competencywere higher than the teachers? views.The views of teachers and administrators on conflict management strategies of theadministrators support each other. According to these views, administrators use problemsolving, compromising, dominating and avoiding ranging from the most to the least.Finally, the results of multiple regression analysis gathered from both administrators?and teachers? views show that interpersonal communication skills are significant variables indefining the used strategy of conflict management.