Social acceptance predictors of high school students for inclusion students: Emotional distance and empathy

In this study, it is aimed to determine the effect of high school students' emotional distance and empathy level towards social acceptance of inclusion students. The study consists of 1132 high school students, 721 female and 411 male, selected by simple random sampling method in Turkey in 2022-2023. "Personal Information Form", "Social Acceptance Scale (SDS)", "Emotional Distance to Others Scale" and "KA-SI Empathic Tendency Scale for Adolescents" were used as data collection tools in the research. The normality test of the data was tested with Skewness and Kurtosis values and it was determined that the data showed normal distribution. Parametric test techniques were used in the analysis of normally distributed variables. Independent samples T-test for two groups and one-way analysis of variance for more than two groups were used to determine the differences between the variables. Post-hoc test was used to determine the source of the difference as a result of one-way analysis of variance. Pearson Correlation Analysis was used to determine the relationships between variables, and regression analysis was used to determine the effect between variables. IBM SPSS Statistics 23 package program and excel database were used in the analysis of the data in the research. As a result of this study, in which the effect of emotional distance and empathy level of high school students towards inclusion students on social acceptance was examined; Emotional distance and empathy have been found to have a significant effect on the level of social acceptance.