The relationship among secondary school students' assertiveness level and peer pressure

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship among secondary school students? assertivenessl evel and peer presure. The scope of this study consists of secondary school students studying in Tuzla in İstanbul province at 2012-2013 instructional year. The sample of the thesis consists of 166 male students (%54,4) and 139 female students(45.6) in total 305 students who were randomly unproportional selected by cluster sampling. Data related to the study was collected in ?Assertiveness Scale? and ?Peer Pressure Scale?. In the scale which consists of three parts, the first part includes personal information, second part includes 45 attitude statments to measure assertiveness and the third part has 28 evaluation statments to determine peer presurre. The data obtained from the scales was encoded and analysed with the help of SPSS software. The frequency and percentage distribution were calculated concerning the data related to thefirst part of the scale, arithmetic mean and standard deviation were used to determine students? attitudes and perceptions, T-testsand Mann Whitney U, were used to compare differences among attitudes, to compare more than two variant groups, one-way analysis of variance was used. Pearson corelation analysis was applied to determine the relationship between the scales. Whetherthere is a significant difference among the opinions was tested at ? = 0.05 signifiance level. Findings obtained from the study are the following; 1.The difference of assertiveness levels among the groups has not been found significant according to gender,ages, grades, fathers? professions, mothers? working conditions, parents? graduations and living together, household income and number of family members. 2. It is found as a result that student see bully behaviours mostly from male students. 3. In the sub-dimension of intimidation, male students have been seen to be exposed to much more bullying than female students, in the other sub-dimensions and total scale, significant difference has not been found. According to ages in total scale, in the sub-dimension of attack on personal belongings and mockery,13-14 year-old students have been seen to be exposed to much more violence than other age groups. 5th and 8th grade students have been found to be exposed to much more violence than the other age groups. 4. In the sub-dimension of attack on personal belongings, students whose fathers are public servant or engineer and students whose mothers are workinghave been found to be exposed to more bullying than the students whose fathers have other occupations. In the othersub-dimensions and total scale, significant difference has not beenfound. 5.Students whose parents are alumnus of high-school have been exposed to much more violence than the students whose parents are alumnis of primary school. According to students? parents living together, any significant difference have not been seen among the groups for the level of being exposed to violence. 6.Students whose families have low or middle income have been exposed tomuch more bullying and mockery than the families with middle or highincome.In the sub-dimension of attack on personal belongings, students whose have families havehigh income have been exposed to much more violence than the students whose families have low income. 7. According to the number of family members, in the sub-dimension of attack on personal belongings, students who have 3 or less members have been found to be exposed to more bullying than the students with 5 family members. 8.In the result of Pearson corelation analysist o determine the relationships between?Assertiveness Scale? and ?Peer Pressure Scale?, the relations have not been foundstatistically significant. KEYWORDS: ASSERTİVENESS, PEER PRESSURE, VİOLENCE, BULLYİNG