The mixed design analaysis of COVID-19 pandemic from relational sociology perspective: The example of Turkey Retired Persons Association

Upon deaths from Covid-19 in Turkey in March 2020, long-term serious restrictions were imposed on 65 years and older for their protection against the virus. The main problem of this research is that, upon the declaration of Covid-19 as a Pandemic, the daily lives of the population aged 65 and over have increasingly become more difficult. As the sub-problems of the research, especially the opinions of retirees about the restrictions imposed, tactics of survival in time and space, frequency of meetings with neighbors, friends, and relatives, and the strategies for coping with emotions such as loneliness have been tried to be answered. The main feature of this thesis is the use of the Relational Sociological perspective and the qualitative research tradition of the Mixed Design (research design) which are theoretically and methodologically compatible with each other and also the use of the qualitative research tradition "Grounded Theory". In addition, it can be said that the study is unique due to its aim of understanding (interpretation) and explanation as well as being reflexive. In this framework, firstly, qualitative research was conducted in the study, and with the experience gained, the options of the closed-ended questions of the quantitative research have been written competently. 16 retired participants aged 65 and over, who are members of the Ankara Turkey Retirement Association, were first interviewed and the changes in their daily lives were presented through figures. Loneliness, neglect of regular health checks and economic difficulties were stated as the most important difficulties. Their use of space, their routines, and how they meet their domestic needs also emerged during the first phase of grounded theory, open coding. In the second stage, axial coding, the common points of the uncertainties experienced by retirees, the similarities and differences in the methods of overcoming them were described. While solidarity was recommended as the core concept of the research, the lives of retirees during the Pandemic were described with the metaphor of river as a process. In the quantitative part of the study, in line with the purposes of the research, a questionnaire was applied to 60 retirees who were reached by stratified sampling in order to learn comprehensively the changes experienced by the participants in their daily life, and the collected data were presented with advanced statistical analysis. In the conclusion of the research, as relational sociology, by trying to overcome dualities such as theory-practice, quantitative-qualitative, time-space, differences/similarities on the basis of ambiguities, and the suitability of mixed-design research for sociology are emphasized.