The Relationship Between Tolerance Levels of University Students with Different Variables

Tolerance in relations between individuals, generally refers to accept others and respecting them and not interfering their free realm regardless of their belief, experience, identity and belonging. The concept with this meaning has an important historical background that refers to liberal values such as equality and freedom. In contempoarary world, with the influence of the historical process and sociological dynamics, the issue of differences has become more and more visible and be one of the important areas of discussion in the social sciences. In this context, the concept of tolerance and its position in social relations is one of the important key concepts that forms an idea about the nature, limit and level of these relations, and enables thinking the potential and problem areas of social interaction in the modern World. This study aims to test whether there is statistically significant relationships regarding university youth’s some judgments that express interpersonal tolerance in order to see empirically the position of tolerance at social level. Some theoretical approaches and related literature are mentioned in the study. While the subject is generally related to political tolerance in international studies it is mostly associated with education and conceptual analysis in Turkey. In this study the data of the field research conducted with the participation of 452 university students from different faculties and classes were analyzed and some results were obtained. Since the Interpersonal Tolerance Scale (IPTS) was adopted and applied in the Turkish case for the first time, the data obtained from the field research were evaluated on the results of the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in order to determine the structure validity. In the original scale, three factors of warm, cold and limits of tolerance were differentiated. The responses given to the interpersonal tolerance scale show that the warm, cold and limits of tolerance could be differentiated as in the original measures. In accordance with this, in this study, the tolerance attitudes of the university youth were evaluated and some statistical findings were obtained. In this respect it is found that there is a statistically significant relationship between sex, religiosity, faculty and warm tolerance. According to this data of university students, the level of warm tolerance of the women and faculty of letters students was found to be high and also it is high for non-religious students.