The examination of high school students' metaphorical perceptions about the concept of autism

The aim of this study is to examine the metaphorical perceptions of high school students about autism. For this reason, student metaphors were created, and these metaphors were categorized. The study group consists of high school students studying in Kocaeli - İzmit. A total of 254 high school students, 115 girls and 49 boys, participated in the study. The forms of 107 students were not processed because they were not suitable for the purpose. A form identifying ASD metaphors was prepared by the researcher. In the form, they were asked to complete this sentence "Autism is similar to/like ………., because ……………………". In addition, the students were asked about the age, gender, school type, class and parental education status of the participants in the form. This study is a qualitative case study using phenomenological design. Content analysis technique was used in the analysis and interpretation of the data, and according to the results of the research, high school students' perceptions of autism were transformed into 38 metaphors and divided into 28 categories. The reliability in the research was 0.90 for the 9th grades; 0.91 for the 10th grades, 0.85 for the 11th grades; and 0.94 for the 12th grades. Among the ASD metaphors, the "person with special needs" metaphor takes the first place, followed by the "ordinary" metaphor, the "child" metaphor, and the "flower" metaphor.