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Aylin Yalçın Irmak & Meryem Metinoğlu
Data Collection Tools
Students were asked to fill in the “Personal Information Form” and “Empathic Tendency
Scale” with their free will, without stating their names on the Internet (Google Forms). Em-
pathic Tendency Scale (ETS) was developed by Dökmen (1988) to measure the emotional
sensitivity to events of individuals, and the potential to empathise in daily life. The high
score revealed that the tendency was high, whereas the score being low showed that the
tendency was low.
SPSS for Windows 18 package programme was used for data analysis. Mann-Whitney
U Test and Kruskal Wallis One Way Variance Analysis were used for percentage and
standard deviation.
Findings
Of the 209 nursing students participating in the study, 52.2% (n=57) were at the age of 21
and above, 21.1% of the students were at the first grade, 34.9% of them were at the sec-
ond grade, 34.4% of them were at the third grade, and 9.6% of them were at the fourth
grade. 78% (n=163)of the students with the majority being female, has a nuclear family
structure. There was no significant difference (p=.614) between the ETS score average
of students participating and non-participating case based role play activities. Empathic
tendency score average of all students was found out to be 68.10±6.23 (most: 100 -
least:20). There was no significant difference in score averages among grades (p=.996).
When empathic tendency scores were compared in terms of gender, it was found out to
be 68.50±6.03 for females, and 66.19±6.91 for males. The difference between the two
groups was found out to be significant in favour of the females (p=.027). It was stated by
the students that they preferred nursing as a profession due to its being easy to find a job
(42.6%) The empathic tendency scores of the students who gave the answer as helping
people was significantly high (p=.008) compared to the others.
Discussion
The results of our study revealed the effectiveness of case based role play activities
on the empathic tendency level of nursing students. The empathic tendency scores of
all students in our study were a little above average (68.10±6.23 most: 100-least: 20).
In some other studies with sampling being nursing students and using the same mea-
surement tools it was also revealed that empathic tendency score averages are above
moderate level (Arifoğlu and Razı, 2011, p. 7-11; Tutuk et al., 2002, p. 36-41; Uncu et al.
2016). Arifoğlu and Razı (2011, p. 7-11) found out in their study that the higher empathic
tendency is, the higher communication skills of the individual becomes.
