Relating the marriage attitudes and life goals of university youth: The case of Mani̇sa Celal Bayar University

The meanings attributed to areas in the life structure such as life goals, family, social relations, physical health and financial success and attitudes related to the question of what individuals will do in their lives are discussed within the scope of self-determination theory. What kind of goals an individual pursues is related to his socio-demographic characteristics and the norms and value system he has adopted. Marriage is also important, especially for young adulthood in terms of establishing a social, economic and emotional structure and gender role expectations. It is thought that the high or low attitudes towards marriage are related to the fact that the goals towards which the young people are directed in their lives mostly belong to internal or external goals. In this study, 663 students studying at certain faculties at Manisa Celal Bayar University in the 2020-2021 period were determined as a sample and the 'Yaşam Amaçları Ölçeği' and 'İnönü Evlilik Tutum Ölçeği' were applied in order to correlate life goals and marriage attitudes. Life goals and marriage attitudes are interrelated. Considering the prominent findings, the differentiation according to gender and faculty type attracted attention. The scores of female students for life goals and internal goals are higher than male students. It has been observed that male students have higher scores in marriage attitudes, so they have a positive attitude compared to female students. Examining the differences in the faculty, the internal goals of the students in the Faculty of Engineering were found to be lower than the other faculties. The fact that the students in the both of faculties Health Sciences and Literature and Sciences are mostly female, and that internal purposes come to the fore in these faculties and the marriage attitudes of the students of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences are lower than the students in other faculties show us that these differences can be examined with the effect of gender.