An investigation of the relationship between high school students' image of God and their value orientation: The example of Yalova

At the very dawn of humankind's adventure there arose a need to believe in a transcendent being (i.e.in God). The name of that transcendent entity may have changed along the way, but its importance and its status for humankind has never changed. Recently the influence exerted on human life and behaviour by the image of God and associated values has been investigated more intensively by a number of scientists and researchers. Taking this as the starting point, the main aim of the present study was touse the example of Yalova to present high school students' image of God and their value biases, and to examine how their image of God and their value orientation related to demographic variables. Relational screening method was used in our study, and applied the Image of God scale and the Schwartz Value Scale to a sample group of 494 subjects. Correlation, t-test and multiple regression were used to analyse the data. This study focussed on two main headings: image of God, and value orientations. The results of the research indicated that Imam Hatip School students' image of God (general image of God, and love and compassion-oriented image of God) was higher than that of Anatolian High School students. The lower the level of education of the parents, the higher was the students' general image of God, and their love and compassion-oriented image of God. With regard to their value orientations, the value to which males attached most importance was hedonism, while for the females it was values of self-direction, universalism, benevolence and security. The hedonism value was higher in the Anatolian High School students than in the Imam Hatip High School students. The values of strength, achievement, traditionalism, compliance/obedience, security and devoutness were higher in Imam Hatip High School students than in Anatolian High School students. The higher the mother's level of education, the lower the value bias for devoutness. The higher the father's level of education, the lower the orientations for devoutness, traditionalism and compliance/obedience. Looking at the relationship between image of God and values, the greater the students' general image of God, the greater the orientation for strength, achievement, universalism, benevolence, traditionalism, compliance/obedience, security and devoutness, but the lower the hedonism value. The greater the love and compassion-oriented image of God, the higher the orientations for strength, achievement, universalism, benevolence, traditionalism, compliance/obedience, security, devoutness, and stimulation. Where the fear and punishment-oriented image of God was greater, the values for strength, hedonism and security were lower. The results were discussed and compared with the findings of other studies in the literature on the image of God, value orientations, and the relationship between image of God and values.