Determination of leadership tendencies of the young people in youth association of the Turkic world in relation to “the dimension of showing understanding”

Abstract

The era we are living in is the information era and young people are of great importance for countries’ development and Turkish youth will prepare the future of the nation and help the other nations to design the future of the world. Due to this important role of the young people, this descriptive study conducted according to scanning model aims to investigate the leadership tendencies of the youths of Turkic world and Turkey in relation to frequency of showing understanding. The study also looks at whether the relations between the frequency of showing understanding and gender are significant and whether there are significant differences between the opinions of the youth of Turkey and the rest of the Turkic world in relation to the dimension of showing understanding.The data collection tool used in the study is Halphin and Winer (1957)’s “scale for the determination of the leadership behaviors”. This scale was adapted to Turkish by Önal (1979) and the understanding dimension of this scale was adapted by the researcher to be used in the present study.The present study was conducted in 2007–2008 school year. The study was conducted in İzmir Girls’ High school among 50 students (21 girls and 29 boys) coming from 12 different countries and studying at 8 different universities in Turkey. The students participating in the study are exchange students attending universities within the framework of “Interuniversity student exchange program”.The analyses conducted reveal that the frequencies of the students’ opinions vary and aggregation is around the “often” option with ten questions. Significant differences in favor of the girls were found for 7th and 9th items and significant differences in favor of the Turkic world were found for 1st and 2nd items and for the rest of the questions, no significant differences were found.