Analysis of 4th grade primary school students' opinions related to traffic safety

The aim of this study is to find out the cognitive structures of 4th-grade primary school students about traffic concept by means of independent word association test and writing/drawing method, which is one of the most effective ways of communication for students, conducted in Traffic Safety course. The participants of this study are composed of 250 (112 male, 138 female) students who undergo 4th-grade education within 10 primary schools connected to the National Education Directorate in Yenimahalle district of Ankara. The methods utilized in this study are independent word association test and writing/drawing. Traffic word is chosen as the key concept to form the test. At the end of the test, reliability coefficrent is found as 90,38 for the independent word association test and as 90,58 for the writing/drawing method. A frequency table is generated according to the obtained data from the test results. According to the results of the study, the students associated the traffic concept with various words in both independent word association test and writing/drawing method. Investigating those words, it occurs that the common answers are gathered in the categories of road, human, and warning indicating that the students follow up to date occasions. Besides, it is seen that students associate traffic and safety words with each other showing that the students acquired an important consciousness about the traffic concept. As a result, it is possible to state that independent word association test and writing/drawing method can be successfully used to determine students' knowledge levels, opinions and the associations they form among concepts. It is suggested to increase the number of studies towards that aim.