OPINIONS OF CHILDREN AGED 7-12 ON THEIR SOCIAL LIVES AND FRIENDLY RELATIONS DURING THE PANDEMIC PERIOD

Abstract

The aim of this research is to examine the views of children between the ages 7 and 12 about their social relations during the Covid-19 process and also to reveal what effect this pandemic process has on their social lives. The data, for this purpose, were collected by using a semi- structured questionnaire and in-depth interwies with 15 studens between the years of 2020 and 2021. Those studens were educated between 1-7 classes of public primary and secondary schools and had a parental leave. The semi-structered questionnaire was created by researchers and consists a total of 11 questions. The interviews were hold up in face-to-face or online form and lasted approximately about 1-1,5 hours. 60% of the participants were girls, 40% were boys and their average age was 9,33 years. All of them are living in Istanbul, Turkey. This research used "Phenomenology Approach" under the qualitative research pattern. The data obtained were divided by descriptive analysis and content analysis. This achived data from the participants were coded 542 times under 32 headings as codes and subcodes. The creation of code frequencies, the determination and mapping of the relationsships between codes and subcodes were done by using the program MAXQDA 2020. The most encoded titels of this study are; "face-to-face meetings with friends", "face-to-face games or events" and "the longing before Covid-19". The least coded title was "cooking". The results of this research state that Covid-19 limited children's social relationshipd and has multiple negative effects on them. The study was concluded by giving various suggestions on that subject.