An Analysis of Secondary School Students' Empathy Skills in terms of Student- and School-Related Variables

Abstract

This study aims to examine the empathy skills of secondary school students in terms of some selected variables at the student and school levels. The study group of the research, which was structured as a correlational survey, consisted of 1010 eighth-grade students attending 29 schools selected by random sampling in the province of Uşak during the 2021-2022 school year. The HLM 8 student version was used in the analysis of the data collected via Google Form. 80% of the difference in empathy scores was found to stem from the student-related variables and 20% from the school-level variables. A positive and significant relationship between the number of books read and gender variable and empathy scores was also identified, and it was concluded that as the number of books read by students increased, their empathy scores increased as well, and the girls had higher empathy scores than the boys. In addition, a negative significant relationship was found between the duration of daily internet use and empathy scores. While no significant relationship between school type and empathy was identified, students at secondary schools located in city centers were observed to have higher empathy scores than those located in small towns.