The Analysis of Traffic Awareness in Pre-School Children in Terms of Certain Variables:The Case of Hilvan/？anl？urfa

In this study it is aimed to determine traffic awareness in 5 year old pre-school children and analyze whether gender, type of the institution, and educational status of parents are effective in traffic awareness. In this survey method study, 100 volunteer children who had normal development were included. 56 of them were enrolled in mind games-intelligence club opened for pre-school children in a youth center in Hilvan district of ？anl？urfa and 44 of them were 5 year old children enrolled in kindergarten. In order to obtain information on the child and family, general information form was used and Traffic Awareness Assessment Scale – Children's Form developed by Aral et al (2016) was conducted. Data collection was carried out individually in approximately 15-20 minutes for each. In data analysis, reliability was determined as 95% and the analysis of normal distribution of data was done. As non-normal distribution of data was observed, Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis tests were used. In the analysis regarding difference (k>2), the source of the difference found in groups with significant difference was found out with Mann Whitney U test. Results showed that children had medium level traffic awareness. The average score obtained from Traffic Awareness Assessment Scale indicated that father’s education status showed a significant difference (X2=14,042; p<0,05). Mann Whitney-U test conducted to evaluate from which group this difference arose showed that children of university graduate fathers had higher traffic awareness comparing to those of illiterate, primary school, secondary school and high school graduate fathers. Besides, children of illiterate fathers had lower traffic awareness than those of secondary and high school graduate fathers. In the average scores obtained in Traffic Awareness Assessment Scale, no statistically significant difference was observed in terms of gender, type of institution and educational status of mothers