Concept Networks of the Students' Compassionate Love Perceptions

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to determine the love perceptions of primary, secondary and high school students. The research was carried out within the scope of "phenomenology" design, one of the qualitative research designs. The case examined in this study is the students' perception of love. In this study, maximum diversity sampling, which is one of the from purposeful sampling methods, was preferred. In diversification, the variables of school level, school type, school success status, grade level and gender were used. The study group of the research selected purposefully which consists of 95 students studying at different grade levels in 3 primary schools, 3 secondary schools and 3 high schools. In the study, “word association technique”, one of the projection techniques, was used as data collection technique and word association form was used as data collection tool. The data were analyzed using concept analysis technique. It was observed that the concepts of "compassionate love" and "passionate love" are intensely related at every level. This situation indicated that the students had a perception of "passionate / romantic love" rather than unconditional love. It was also noticed that students generally had positive perceptions regarding "favor", "brotherhood", "sharing", "compassion", "mercy" and "tolerance".