An investigation of middle school students' attitudes and awareness of water use

The purpose of this mixed method study is to investigate middle school students' attitudes and awareness of water use. The quantitative data were collected through the administration of "the scale for attitudes toward water use". The qualitative data were collected through semi structured interviews. In the study the stratified sampling method was employed. The participants of the study were 1050 secondary school students (6th, 7th and 8th grades) in Afyonkarahisar during the 2015-2016 school year. The qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 18 students who had low (n=6), moderate (n=6) and high level socio economic status (n=6). The quantitative data were analysed using SPSS statistical package software while the qualitative data were content analyzed. It was found out that students mostly agreed with careful use of water. Female students had significantly higher levels of awareness of water use than male ones. In addition, students whose parents were university graduates had high significantly levels of awareness of water use. The qualitative findings also support the quantitative results. Keywords: middle school students, awareness of water, environment.