A study of psychology students' attitude to programming, digital literacy and acceptance levels of programming within the framework of social cognitive theory

It is very important that students who graduate from schools have the digital competencies required by the age and their fields in today's world where the age has developed and technological competencies have become important. With the development of computer technologies, psychology has become a branch of science that uses technology and benefits more from it. In our country, some universities have started to give programming education to students in psychology departments. The aim of the research is to examine the digital literacy, attitudes towards programming and acceptance levels of students studying in the psychology department within the framework of social cognitive theory. In the research, the adaptation of the acceptance level scale to Turkish was carried out and the digital literacy scale and the attitude towards programming scale were used. 244 psychology department students from 4 universities participated in the research and it was concluded that the digital literacy level of psychology department students was higher than male students. When the digital literacy level is examined according to the grade level, it is seen that the digital literacy level of the 1st grade students is higher. It has been determined that the digital literacy level of the students who received programming education during the undergraduate period is higher than the students who did not take programming courses or who took pre-bachelor programming courses. When the students' attitudes towards programming were examined, no gender difference was observed. Looking at the grade level, it was determined that the 1st grade students developed a positive attitude compared to the other grade levels. When the attitudes towards programming were analyzed according to their programming background, no difference was observed between the students who took programming courses and those who did not. There was no difference between male and female psychology students at the programming acceptance level. Programming acceptance level differed in favor of 1st year students. There was no difference in programming background at the programming acceptance level. In the study, a positive relationship was observed between the level of digital literacy and the attitude towards programming, and between the attitude towards programming and acceptance of programming. In the research, it was seen that the level of digital literacy and attitude towards programming positively affected the acceptance of programming. With the results obtained as a result of the study, suggestions were made to the literature.