An Examination of the Hopelessness Levels of Youngsters who Attend to Youth Centers in Central Anatolia Region in Turkey
Akgul Beyza Merve, Karaman Merve, Karakucuk Suat, Yaman Bilal

Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine the hopelessness levels of youngsters who spend their leisure times at youth centers according to certain variables. The research population is composed of youngsters who are members of youth centers in Central Anatolia Region in Turkey. The research group is composed of 448 females and 450 males whose ages vary between 15 and 25 and who are members of youth centers in 11 provinces in the region. While questions were asked to take youngsters' personal details and opinions on leisure time, what was utilized to identify their hopelessness levels was Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) that was developed by Beck et al. (1974), adapted into Turkish language by Dilbaz and Seber (1993) and of which reliability and validity studies were performed by Durak and Palabiyikoglu (1994). The internal consistency coefficient for this study was found to be .81. Revealing the descriptive statistics of youngsters' hopelessness levels since they did not exhibit parametric characteristics and applying Mann-Whitney U test to examine whether their hopelessness scores varied according to gender, age, having personal talent, it was found that the hopelessness level differed according to all these variables (p<0.05). According to perceived income level, leisure time sufficiency, exhaustion from daily life, efficient use of leisure time and leisure-constraining factors, Kruskal-Wallis-H test was used and it was seen that the hopelessness level differed according to all variables but exhaustion from daily life (p<0.05). Consequently, the hopelessness levels of youngsters who spent their leisure time at youth centers was low while the hopelessness levels of those whose ages were between 15 and 18, who perceived the income level as being very low and very high, did not have personal talent, thought that they did not use their leisure time efficiently, perceived their leisure time as being very sufficient or very insufficient, and whose leisureconstraining factors were job and home household responsibilities were higher.

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