Research on the Effects of the Covid-19 Quarantine Process on the Aggression Levels of University Students

Abstract

Background: Due to the Covid-19 epidemic, the closure of universities and the transition to distance education in our country as well as all over the world have made university students one of the groups most affected by this process. Aim: The aim of this research is to examine the aggression levels of university students who had to take online learning due to the Covid-19 epidemic in terms of some variables. Methods: The sample of the study consists of a total of 204 students, 130 (63.7%) male and 74 (36.3%) female, who had taken online learning during the Covid-19 epidemic period. In order to collect the data, the personal information form prepared by the researcher and the "Aggression Scale", which is the Turkish version of the scale developed by Buss and Perry in 1992 and updated by Buss and Warren in 2000, are used. In the analysis of the data, frequency and percentage values are taken to examine the personal information distribution of the participants, Skewness-Kurtosis values are examined to determine whether the data showed a normal distribution and it is determined that it shows a normal distribution. Independent Sample T test and One Way ANOVA tests are used to determine the differences between the variables. The significance level is taken as 0.05. Correlation analysis is performed to determine the direction and amount (strength) of the relationship between the sub-dimensions of the scale. Results: According to the findings, it is shown in this research that the university students had normal level of aggression tendency. When the mean scores of the physical aggression, verbal, hostility, anger, and indirect aggression sub-dimensions of the aggression scale are examined, it can be said that the mean scores of the anger sub-dimension are higher than the mean scores of the other sub-dimensions. According to the gender variable; A significant difference was found in favor of males in total aggression scores, physical-verbal aggression and anger sub-dimensions. According to the variable of the field of learning; There were significant differences in total aggression scores, physical-verbal aggression and hostility sub-dimensions. Between the aggression scale sub-dimensions, a moderate and high level of significant correlation was found at the level of 0.01. Conclusion: It has been concluded that the Covid-19 process has no effect on the aggression level of university students. It was observed that as the level of anger and physical aggression of the students who spent the quarantine period at home and received online learning increased with respect to the level of general aggression is also increased. It can be said that during the quarantine period, the fact that students take time for themselves while they are at home and stay away from environmental conditions that will increase their aggression levels causes these results. Keywords: Covid-19, University students, aggression