Examination of Meeting the Needs of University Students from Social Support Systems

In this study, it is aimed to determine which social support systems respectively preferred by students to meet their basic needs. The research was conducted with 347 university students from Sakarya University Faculty of Education, 243 of whom were female and 104 of whom were male. A ranking chart was used to determine the rank of fulfilment of the five basic needs of the students, as in the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, (physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization), by social support systems (family, relatives, friends, teacher-school, and society). The data was analyzed by rank order judgment scaling. As a result of the research, it was found that university students regard family as the primary social support system in meeting all their needs (physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization). The ranking does not change in meeting the needs of safety, love and belonging, and esteem; in meeting the physiological needs, it was observed that relatives are preferred more than friends. Another finding of the research is that in meeting the need for self-actualization, relatives are preferred the least.