Examination of the relationship between primary school students' attitudes to outdoor play and peer bullying

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between primary school 4th grade students' outdoor playing attitudes and peer bullying and to determine whether these characteristics differ according to demographic variables. The research consisted of a total of 296 students, 149 girls and 147 boys, studying at low, medium and high socio-economic level primary schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in Seyhan district of Adana province in the first term of the 2021-2022 academic year. Students were selected through simple random sampling. In the research, "Peer Bullying Scale-Child Form" was used to determine bully and victim status of students, "Attitude Scale towards Outdoor Play for Children" for outdoor play behaviors, and "Personal Information Form" to determine personal characteristics. In the analysis of the data, correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship between outdoor playing attitudes and bullying and exposure to bullying, Kruskal Wallis-H test, Mann Whitney-U test, Independent Sample t-Test and One-way ANOVA test were used for analyzes related to variables. The significance value was taken as p<.05 in all analyzes. The findings obtained in the research; In case of bullying, a significant difference was found according to gender, socio-economic level, and mother's education level. However, no significant difference was found according to the father's educational status variable. In the case of being bullied, a significant difference was found according to gender, socio-economic status, mother's education level, but there was no significant difference according to father's education level. A significant difference was found according to the gender and socio-economic status of the students' attitudes towards playing outdoor games, but there was no significant difference according to the education level of the parents. There was no significant relationship between the attitude of playing outdoor games and the scores of being exposed to bullying. A significant relationship was found between the attitude of playing outdoor games and bullying scores. It can be said that there is a negative and significant relationship between the attitude of playing outdoor games and bullying, and as the scores of outdoor gaming attitudes increase, the bullying scores decrease. Keywords: Bullying, bullying, being bullied, outdoor play