The investigation of the relationship between the use of wattpad application by middle school students and their reading and writing self-efficacy

In this study, it was tried to examine the habits of middle school students' use of Wattpad, a digital reading and writing site, and the effect of Wattpad on middle school students' reading and writing self-efficacy. Relational Screening Method, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in order to achieve the purpose determined in the research. The Relational Screening Model aims at determining the covariance existence and its degree between two or more variables. The study was carried out in the second semester of 2016-2017 academic year, in "100th Anniversary Atatürk Secondary School", "Salahaddin Eyyübi Secondary School" and "Mahir Ayabak Secondary School", located in the Bitlis City Center, which is connected to MEB, and in which it's been determined that Wattpad is widely used. In the study, "Personal Information Form" was applied to 60 middle school students who were found to use Wattpad first and by evaluating the data collected from the "Personal Information Form", 60 middle school students who do not use Wattpad were determined by trying to equate Turkish grade point average, gender and grade level. In the research, "Personal Information Form", "Reader's Self-Efficacy Scale" and "Writing Self-Efficacy Scale" were used as data collection tool and SPSS 24 for Mac was used in the analysis of the data. Descriptive statistical methods(average, standard deviation, frequency) were used when study data were evaluated. Two-way ANOVA and two-way MANOVA in comparison of gender and Wattpad use status as independent variables; Bonferroni test as Post-Hoc test in determining which group the difference originated from; Ki-Square test as comparison of qualitative data; Pearson Moments Multiplication Correlation Coefficient in normal distribution of data in the evaluation of qualitative and quantitative relations; Sperarman's rho was used to compare normal non-dispersed data. According to the findings obtained in the research, it was ascertained that the number of female students using Wattpad is higher than that of male students for secondary school students reading and writing books on Wattpad; and the majority of middle school students using Wattpad for reading and writing meet this site through their friends and spend an hour per day on this site; have access to this site mostly via mobile phones; use this site at home generally as a venue, entire Wattpad participants use this site for reading, and some of the Wattpad participants also use it for both reading and writing; students prefer to read adventure books most, and it was determined that the ratio of female participants who read books in the type of young fiction was higher than male participants. It's been found that there is no relationship between the time spent by students in Wattpad and the readers' self-efficacy and writing self-efficacy; as a result of comparing the literacy and the writing self-efficacy of the middle school students who use the Wattpad site and those who do not use it, there is no relationship between the two groups and the genders; reading and writing self-efficacy results of both of the two groups were at a good level and close to each other; the education level of the parents of middle school students who read books from Wattpad was significantly higher than that of the parents of middle school students who do not read books in digital environment. Keywords: Wattpad, digital reading, digital writing, self-efficacy