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Purpose and Significance: Labels function in education as means of delivering specialized services to identified students (Hickey & Toth, 1990) and the label “gifted” is widely used to describe advanced academic performance or cognitive development. The label gifted can affect both familial and peer relationships. It may also affect the child’s sense of self-worth both directly and through the response of others to the label. The related literature shows that the label “gifted” has been hypothesized to be perceived both positively and negatively by students, their parents and friends. Nevertheless, such a hypothesis has not been investigated sufficiently to draw certain conclusions. The purpose of the current study was to investigate possible positive and negative effects of gifted label. The study was distinct in terms of its methodology through which labeling effects were investigated both before and after students were labeled as gifted and comparisons were made with a control group. The following research questions were examined: 1.Do gifted students’ perceptions about themselves and about their parents’ and friends’ attitudes towards them differ from non-gifted students’ perceptions?2.Do gifted students’ perceptions of themselves before they are identified as gifted differ from their perceptions after they are identified as gifted?3.Do gifted students’ perceptions of their parents’ attitudes towards them before they are identified as gifted differ from their perceptions after they are identified as gifted?4.Do gifted students’ perceptions of their friends’ attitudes towards them before they are identified as gifted differ from their perceptions after they are identified as gifted?Method: Research participants consisted of 415 sixth-grade students (47.5% female and 52.5% male) who applied to the Education Programs for Talented Students (EPTS) at Anadolu University in Eskisehir in Turkey and who filled out the Gifted Label Effects-Scale (GLE-S) during their applications. The gifted group included 28 students who were identified to be gifted among the 415 students by the identification system of the EPTS. These students were accepted to the EPTS programs. Because two of them dropped out the program before the posttest was administered, the research group included 26 gifted students. The comparative group included 387 non-labeled students who applied to the EPTS but not identified to be gifted. Of the gifted sample 23.1% was female and 76.9% were male. As a posttest the GLE-S was administered to the gifted students after they attended the EPTS programs for 4 months. We had such a time period between the pretest and posttest because we hypothesized that labeling effects did not appear soon after the identification; instead a reasonable time period was necessary for the emergence of the effects. GLE-S is composed of 3 subscales. They measure self-perceptions, perceptions of parental attitudes and perceptions of friends’ attitudes (see Appendix A). Each subscale includes 8 items, of which 4 are related to positive perceptions and the other 4 are related to negative perceptions. In total, the scale includes twenty-four items, half of which are negative perceptions and the other half are positive perceptions. A four point likert-type scale is used for scoring the items in the scale. Each item is scored from “0” to “3” (“0” = It does not suit me, “1” = It suits me slightly, “2” = It suits me mostly, “3” = It suits me completely). The items related to negative perceptions are coded in reverse. Total score on the scale can range from 0 to 72. Scores closer to “0” mean negative perceptions whereas those closer to “72” mean positive perceptions. Cronbach alpha coefficient for the reliability of the GLE-S for 24 items was found to be .72.Pretest and posttest scores were compared at total score, subtest score and item level since each item in the scale was supposed to have its distinct significance. Paired-samples t-test was used to compare pretest and posttest differences at total score and subtest levels whereas Wilcoxon sign-ranks test was used to compare pretest and posttest differences at item level. Independent-samples t-test was used to compare gifted students’ scores with the scores of the students who were not identified to be gifted.Results: A significant difference was found between the perception score of non-gifted students (X=54.93) and the posttest perception score of gifted students (X=51.80), t (411) =2.12, (p |
