The investigation of the relationship between the quality of life in school, optimism and hope among middle school students

The aim of this study is to determine predictive power of optimism and hope in perceived quality of school life of secondary school students. Another aim of this research is to determine predictive power of optimism and hope in physical environment of the school and classroom, positive attitudes towars school, student-teacher relationship and psychosocial factors which are the domains of the quality of school life. The last aim of this research is to investigate gender, grade level and socio-economic level differences in perceived quality of school life scores. The sample of the study consist of 561 secondary school students who are studying in grades 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th from the city center of Izmir. Quality of Life of School Children Scale, Optimism Scale, Children's Hope Scale and Personal Information Form were used as data gathering instruments. Data was processed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, version 23.0 for Windows). Pearson bivariate correlations, multiple regression analysis (method stepwise), t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to statistical analysis. The findings revealed that optimism and hope are the significant predictors of perceived quality of school life. These variables explained 41.2% of the total variance of the quality of school life. In addition, optimism and hope also predictors of the domains of the quality of school life. These variables explained 19.2% of the total variance in the physical environment of the school and classroom, 32.9% of the total variance in the positive attitudes towards school, 22.4% of the total variance in the student-teacher relationship and %20 of the total variance in the psychosocial factors. And also, in terms of gender there was no statistically significant difference in the quality of school life scores, but there were significant differences in terms of grade and socio-economic level. These findings were discussed in the light of the findings of previous research in the literature.