The study of attitudes of secondary school students living in the area and around of the Levent Valley towards the Geopark

The purpose of this study is to determine the level of attitudes of secondary school students living in the area and around the Levent Valley towards the Geopark. In this study, data were obtained by using the descriptive and correlational scanning models. The research was made by studying a total of 253 secondary school students studying in the academic year 2012-2013. In this research "the attitude scale" consisting of 18 items was used. The Cronbach's Alpha coefficient of this scale is ".93". SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences Program, Version 17.0) software package was used, in the evaluation of the data obtained. For the analysis of data, t-test, One-way ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis H were applied. According to the findings obtained in this study, the majority of surveyed secondary school students' attitudes towards Levent Valley Geopark was found to be positive. However it is determined that the attitude scores of female students was higher than the attitude of the male students. Also, the attitude scores of students who previously visited the area were found to be higher than the scores of the non-visited ones. It is demernined that variables such as class level, family income and parental education level do not cause a significant difference on the students' attitudes towards geoparks. Key words: Social Sciences, Geopark, Attitudes, Levent Valley.