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Abstract
This study was conducted to examine peer relations, social support perceptions and perfectionism of working and non-working children as per their gender. The population of the research was composed of working children attending 1st to 6th grades of vocational education centers and non-working children attending 1st to 3rd grades of general high schools and representing lower socio-economic levels who are between the age of 15-17. One thousand six hundred and twenty children, 652 of whom were from vocational education centers and 968 of whom were from lower socio-economic levels, were selected by random sampling method. However, some forms were invalid due to various reasons so the analyses were made using data from 1390 children – 551 working and 839 non-working. The data collecting instruments were General Information Form, Peer Relationship Scale (PRS), Social Support Appraisal Scale for Children and Adolescents (SSESCA), and Multi-Dimensional Perfectionism Scale (MDPS). The data were analyzed by applying the Mann Whitney U-Test. The results of the research revealed that the gender of children caused a meaningfully significant difference in the following: regarding PRS, the gender of working children had an impact on the Commitment, Self-Disclosure and Loyalty sub-dimensions and the gender of non-working children had an impact on Commitment and Self-Disclosure sub-dimensions as well as the total score; regarding SSESCA, the gender of working children had an impact on the Teacher’s Support sub-dimension and the gender of non-working children had an impact on Peer Support, Teacher’s Support and the total score; regarding MDPS, the gender of working children had an impact on the Order sub-dimension and the gender of non-working children had an impact on Order and Family Criticism sub-dimensions (p<0.01, p<0.05).
