Developing and evaluating the middle school students' coping with emergency situations scale

Emergency and disaster events reduce the quality of life of students and cause stress, injuries, disability, illness, depression, burnout and psychological disorders in students. Emergency and disaster education not only supports the social and mental development of students, but also protects them from the dangers of the disaster environment and alleviates the psycho-social effects of the disaster. The aim of this study is to improve secondary school students' CWESS and to evaluate the educational effectiveness of secondary school students' ability to cope with emergencies by using the developed CWESS. The study was carried out as a methodological study in order to develop a scale for 479 secondary school students affiliated to the Muş National Education Directorate between March 2020 and July 2021. The scale consisted of a total of 30 items and 3 sub-dimensions. In order to develop the Middle School Students' Coping with Emergencies Scale, 479 students who participated in the research got the lowest score from the total scale 34, the highest score was 113, the average score was 67.17 ± 15.13, the lowest score they got from the "Basic First Aid" sub-dimension was 15, the highest score was 58, and the average score was 58. The lowest score obtained from the "Natural Disasters" sub-dimension is 31.66 ± 8.58, the lowest score is 10, the highest score is 40, the average score is 22.19 ± 5.26, the lowest score from the "Requesting Help" sub-dimension is 5, the highest score is 20, and the average score is 13.32. It was calculated as ± 3.26.The Cronbach α reliability coefficient of the CWESS was calculated as 0.910. After validity and reliability, 38 students were determined as the training group and 36 people as the control group as a quasi-experimental design. In the study, the questionnaire was composed of socio-demographic information and emergency information questions. CWESS was used to measure the ability to cope with emergencies. The training group was given emergency and disaster training twice a week for four weeks, and the results were re-evaluated after the training. In the training group, the average score in the CWESS and all sub-dimensions of the scale was higher than the control group (p<0.05). It was seen that providing emergency and disaster education to secondary school students increased the ability of secondary school students to cope with emergencies. Keywords: Secondary School Students, Emergencies and Disaster, Ability to Cope with Emergency Situations, Validity, Reliability.