Abstract:

This study aims to examine the relationship between middle school students' attitudes towards being democratic and tolerant. This research was carried out with the relational survey model, one of the quantitative research methods. The research sample consisted of 402 middle school students in the central district of Kütahya in the first semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. Research data were collected using easily accessible case sampling, one of the purposive sampling methods. "Personal Information Forms", "Democracy Attitude Scale", developed by Şimşek (2011), and "Tolerance Attitude Scale", developed by Taş (2018), were used as data collection tools. Before analysing the data in the research, Kolmogorov Smirnov, kurtosis and skewness coefficient, Histogram and Q-Q and Box-line plots were used to see if the data met the assumption of normality. Accordingly, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov value was found to be greater than .05 for democracy (p=.200) and tolerance scales (p=0.087). It was determined that the study data showed a normal distribution with other analyses. Descriptive statistics, one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), Pearson correlation analysis, and simple linear regression analyses were used to analyse the data. According to the research results, middle school students' attitudes towards being democratic and tolerant are above the average. While middle school students' attitudes towards being democratic showed a significant difference according to the grade variable, they did not differ significantly according to gender, number of siblings, mother's education level, father's education level, or income level. Furthermore, attitudes towards being tolerant differed significantly according to the father's education level and income level variables, but not to gender, grade, mother's education level or the number of siblings. There was a moderately positive and significant relationship between middle school students' attitudes towards being democratic and tolerant, while attitudes towards being tolerant explained 32% of the total variance regarding being democratic.

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