The social service proffesionals' views on early marriage in the context of core values of children's rights: The example of Bitlis province

This study aims to evaluate the views of professionals working in the institutions/organizations that provide direct and indirect social services in Bitlis province towards early marriage in the context of the basic values of children's rights and to reveal the relationship between the perspective of professional staff on early marriage and various sociodemographic variables. The target population of the study, includes professional staff in the definition of social services professionals in institutions/organizations that provide direct and indirect social services throughout Bitlis province (social worker, school counselor, psychologist, sociologist, child development specialists, teachers). Within the scope of the study, 91 of the 94 professional staff working throughout the province answered the questionnaire, and 94% participation was achieved in the study. The data required to test the hypotheses propounded in this study were collected by a questionnaire constructed by the researcher. The questionnaire consists of 66 questions in total, 23 closed-ended and 43 semi-closed-ended, which are about the perspective of professional staff on childhood and children's rights, their personal history regarding marriage, defining of early marriage, their perspective on the origin of early marriages, and the cases of early marriage in professional work. SPSS 22 program was used to evaluate the findings obtained in the study. The findings were analized by interpreting the frequency and percentage distributions in the context of the basic elements of the rights-based approach and testing them with hypotheses by the researcher. The relationship of the opinions of the professional staff regarding early marriage with sociodemographic variables (gender, age, profession, social environment in which they grew up, social work area where they work with intensity, tenure, marital status, educational background on children's rights, educational background on early marriage) was analyzed with Pearson Ki-Kare independence test. In the study, the professional staff's approaches towards the phenomenon of early marriage, their ideas related to the solution of early marriage problem and their approaches towards the early marriage cases in their professional work were discussed based on the findings in addition to the hypotheses' being tested.