Intergenerational Relationship Quality In Terms Of Lifelong Learning: The Effect of Family Climate on The Quality of Intergenerational Relationship

Abstract

Social, emotional and physical relationships are one of the most important tools that human beings need to continue their lives. The people that individuals firstly get in touch with are their families. It is quite possible that individuals who were grown up in the normally multigenerational families are impressed by these families ’ atmosphere. Some research findings indicate that individuals constitute their relationship at advancing ages by taking as a reference their first relationship forms. The purpose of this study is to examine this effect of family climate on the quality of intergenerational relationship in terms of different generations. The universe of the study consists of 672 individuals who live in Kocaeli Province in Turkey. The sample group was chosen by the convenience sampling method. Study data were gathered by using the “ Family Climate Scale” which was developed by Björnberg and Nicholson (2007). And adapted into Turkish by Gonul, Is ık -Bas, and Sahin-Acar (2018), and the “ Multidimensional Intergenerational Relationship Quality Scale f or Aging Chinese Parents” was developed by Xue Bai. For data gathering, online questionnaire forms were used. In the analysis of the data, the Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated for the correlation between variables. To examine the predictive power of the predictor variables on dependent variables simple linear regression analysis was firstly done, and then a multiple hierarchical regression analysis was carried out. Thefindings indicated that relatedness in family, intergenerational authority and cognitive cohesion which are the subdimensions of family climate variable affect and predict intergenerational relationship quality in a significant way. Thus, this study reveals that there is a moderate and positive relationship between family climate and intergenerational relationship quality. In the light of these findings, to increase the quality of intergenerational relationships, it is very important to increase interpersonal harmony, similarities in attitudes, beliefs and values and sharing things.