TURİZM ÖĞRENCİLERİNİN SOSYAL YETERLİK ALGISININ DEMOGRAFİK ÖZELLİKLER AÇISINDAN İNCELENMESİ

The individual perception and beliefs to deal with a particular situation will affect the decision-making process and behaviors. If individuals with positive perceptions of their personal skills believe to be able to solve the problem or manage the challenge, they tend to take risks and can communicate effectively. Social efficacy, one of the perceptions of the individual is about the belief of the individual's social skills and the performance in a social situation. This perception, which is influenced by many factors such as family, friends, age, gender, fraternal relations, is also caused by the influence of situational factors and cultural determinants as well as personal characteristics. From a social viewpoint, the individual develops a belief in his or her ability to socialize, that is, the ability to empathize and socialize, and begins to think that he or she is in this behavioral pattern. When the individual perceives himself or herself as successful in the social sense, he or she obtains positive assumptions, such as self-esteem, self-sufficiency and social acceptance; on the other hand the perception of failure causes the negative consequences such as exclusion, abuse and asocial behavior. Social efficacy includes two basic dimensions as emotional and social which emphasize the internal and observable factors. Each dimension has three sub-dimensions which include the following factors (Riggio, 1986: 650): • Emotional expressivity: Emotional expressivity is about the general skill in nonverbal sending. It refers to focusing on posed emotional sending through the ability to express. This kind of expressivity is characterized as emotionally charged. • Emotional sensitivity: Emotional sensitivity is about the general skill in receiving and decoding the nonverbal communications of others. It refers to being able to concerned with and vigilant in observing the nonverbal emotional cues of others through the decoding the emotions.Emotional control: Emotional control is about the general ability to control and regulate emotional and nonverbal displays. It refers to being a good emotional actor and pose emotions on cue through the using conflicting emotional cues to mask felt emotional states. • Social expressivity: Social expressivity is about the general verbal speaking skill and an ability to engage others in social interaction. It refers to appearing outgoing and gregarious because of their ability to initiate conversations with others. This skill includes the speaking spontaneously without apparent control or monitoring of the content. • Social sensitivity: Social sensitivity is about the decoding and understanding verbal communication and general knowledge of the norms. It refers to being attentive to others through the knowledge of social norms and rules. • Social control: Social control is about the general skill in social self-presentation. It refers to being socially adept, tactful and socially adept. This skill includes the taking a particular stance or orientation in a discussion and playing various social roles. These sub-dimensions are considered the main variable in this study. Because the social skill and efficacy become is even more important in the professions that need to be face to face with people. Therefore, the subject of the study is not only important in the professions, but also is important for the education. Because the theoretical education gives information about the literature, but there is also need some social knowledge in the work life. From this viewpoint, the aim of the study is defined as determine the social efficacy of the tourism students, which are needed social skills more than other sectors, because of the nature of the service sector. The satisfaction of the consumers is up to employees’ communication skills and the quality of service in a large extent. The target population of the study is the tourism students because of the fact that the tourism sector needs the social skills. Moreover, there needs an attention to social skills in the education. The sample of the study is the 90 Silifke Taşucu Vocational School Students that in the travel, tourism and recreation services. The full inventory methods are used, but the number of the students is also is one of the boundaries of the study. Each sub-dimension has 15 items and the survey has 90 social efficacy items totally. The data are analyzed through the correlation, t-test and descriptive analysis. The participants are 46% male and 53% female and the greater part of them is single as expected. According to the results, there are significant correlations between sub-dimensions, and the level of the total social efficacy is 2,8875 on a 5 point scale. Moreover, there are significant differences between the means of the social efficacy according to gender groups, while other demographic factors do not have any effects.