A comparative study of marriage-divorce and related factors in Türkiye’s regions using kohonen som - mds tandem and multimoora approaches

Abstract

Marriages and divorces have recently changed along with economic developments, social and cultural shifts in mostly developed countries including Türkiye, and therefore affect the countries’ demography. This study is motivated by recent significant changes in Türkiye’s marriage and divorce rates and regional differences. The data is retrieved from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) for 26 regions of Türkiye. Kohonen’s self-organizing map (SOM), multi-dimensional scaling (MDS), and MULTIMOORA (Multi-Objective Optimization by Ratio analysis plus Full Multiplicative Form) methods are used for the proposed methodology. SOM and MDS methods are employed sequentially to find similar and dissimilar regions. The variations of the regions are also evaluated by one of the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods, MULTIMOORA. Indicators of all regions differ relatively compared to the previous ten-year period, as well as the changes vary. The regions that show the changes both the most and the least are located in the country’s East. The study investigates regional differences of the relationship between marriage, divorce, and socio-economic factors in a different methodology. The combined usage of SOM-MDS tandem and MCDM methodologies provides more accurate and sensitive results about region-based differences in Türkiye.