Abstract
The concept of religion, which is one of the most common concepts in daily life, affects the lives of both individuals and societies. Since the holistic effect is thought to be also affected the marriage and family adjustment of individuals, the issue of marital adjustment and religiosity between spouses is important. In this study, the effect of religiosity on marital adjustment was evaluated along with various variables.
In this respect, the effects of religiosity on married individuals who have different religiosity level has been analyzed, and the effects also have been evaluated with some factors such as gender, age, educational status, economic status, working condition, number of children, duration of marriage, married style, and sources of religious education. In other words, the main problem of the research that “is there a relationship between the level of religiosity and marital adjustment (happiness in marriage) of the married individuals who are living in Kahramanmaras?”, and the basic hypothesis was defined as "there is a significant positive relationship between religiosity and marital adjustment (happines in marriage)”.
In the research, the correlational model which is a quantitative research design was used and the survey form consisting of ‘Personal and Sociodemografic Information Form’ which contains sociodemografic factors such as gender, economic status and married styles has been created by author appropriate to the topic, ‘Marital Adjustment Scale’, formed by Almas and evaluates the level of marital adjustment between spouses, and ‘Religiosity Scale’ formed by Kula that evaluates the level of religiosity, has been conducted on a group which consist of 420 (218: F, 202: M) married individuals who are living in Kahramanmaras. After collecting the scores on scales of married individuals, the data was transferred to computer and SPSS 21 statistical program was used for the analysis of the data. The mean scores and standard deviations of religiosity was calculated, and Mann-Whitney U-test was used to determine whether the relations between two different groups was significant or not. Kruskal-Wallis H test was used to analyze the datas obtained from comparison of more than two groups and for the analysis of the significant differences Spearman coefficient of correlation was used in order to determine the variation of correlation between two variables. For the testing of hypotheses, significance value (p) was taken as ,05.
The results show that 218 (51,9%) of the participants were female and 202 (48,1%) were male, at the same time 68 (16,2%) participants were graduates of primary school, 36 (8,6%) were of secondary school, 63 (15%) were of high school, 216 (51,4%) were of university and 37 (8,8%) of them have master degree. In addition, 325 (77,4%) participants had middle purchasing power, 45 (10,7%) participants had lower purchasing power, and 50 (11,9%) had high purchasing power. Also, the results determine that 103 (24,5%) of the participants were unemployed, 50 (11,9%) of them were worker, 225 (53,7%) of them were officer, 16 (3,8%) of them were trades, 1 (0,2%) of them were farmer and 9 (2,1%) of them were retired person. In addition, 165 (39,3%) of the participants were married by the way of pre-arranged marriage, 157 (37,4%) of them were married by the way of acquaintance and 98 (23,3%) of them were married by the way of friend’s proposal. The datas in regard to the duration of marriage show that 23 (5,5%) of participants have been married less than 1 year, 60 (14,3%) of them were together from 1 to 3 years, 64 (15,2%) of them were together from 4 to 6 years, 61 (14%) of them were together from 7 to 9 years, and 212 (50,5%) of them have been married for 10 years and more. Also the results in regard to the sources of religious education show that 131 (31,2) of participants received from their family, 75 (17,9) of them received from school, 156 (37,1) of them received from mosque, 47 (11,2) of them received from multiple sources.
In the study, also a positive significant correlation was found between the participants' scores of the rituals, knowledge, affective dimensions of religiosity and happiness in marriage. On the other hand, any significant correlation was found between the scores of the rituals, knowledge, belief sub-dimensions of religiosity and the unhappiness in marriage. Moreover, in the results of analyses, it is clearly found that there is a positive correlation between the scores of marital adjustment (happiness in marriage) and religiosity.
As a conclusion, the findings of this study showed that the married individuals in Kahramanmaras who stated to have more high religious level, experienced happiness in their marriage.