The Effect of Education Programs on Students’ Attitudes Towards Environmental Problems, A Case Study: Ege University (Izmir-Turkey)

This study was conducted with 184 female and 112 male students at Ege University during the 2022/23 academic year, funded by the TUBITAK 2209/A University Students Research Projects program. The study aimed to determine whether education and training programs influence the attitudes of students at Ege University towards environmental issues. To achieve this, the first stage utilized the “Scale of Attitudes towards Environmental Problems,†which is appropriate for university students. In the second stage, we examined the educational programs and course contents of the participating students to investigate any subjects related to environmental education within the course offerings. For this purpose, we referenced course catalogs published on Ege University’s website. Data analysis was performed using the IBM SPSS Statistics 21 program. An independent groups t-test was applied when the independent variable contained two categories, while one-way analysis of variance (One-Way ANOVA) was used when the independent variable had more than two categories. The significance level was set at 0.05 for this study. According to the results, there were no significant differences in the attitudes of the students at Ege University towards the environment based on gender, parental education level, family income, or place of residence. Additionally, there were no significant differences in students’ attitudes towards the environment between those who took environmental courses and those who did not. However, when attitudes towards environmental issues were analyzed in relation to the field of study, a significant difference was found.