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The Relationship between Demographic Variables of Gen X and Gen Y Students and Organizational Citizenship Behavior
JOURNAL OF YOUTH RESEARCHES
Researchers Schewe & Meredith (2004), who investigate the sociological aspect of gen-
erations, claim that values, attitudes and shopping habits of people who are born in the
same era and experience similar things show similarities throughout their life. They claim
that such people generate a group which should be called cohort. Contrary to 20-25
years of period like World War II (1939-1945), the period due to an external factor might
be long or short. Schewe & Meredith (2008) say that the factors that constitute a cohort
are mass communication, literacy, and social outcomes. They point out that the same
events may not affect different groups in the same way. For instance; Brazil did not go
to World War II, thus was not affected. However, the same war affected Russia a lot
(Schewe & Meredith, 2004:52). Murphy (2007), described the term generation as a group
of people programmed within the same era. He states that people are exposed to some
codes like true-false and good-bad, and they develop themselves by means of mutual
things like some specific news, heroes, music, humor, parental styles and education
systems (Murphy, 2007: 7). Chen (2010) believes generations are developed by a spe-
cific era, so he claims that generations are formed by groups that have similar attitudes,
values, and life styles and have the features of that time period (Chen, 2010:133). Yet,
McCrindle & Wolfinger (2017) do not agree with the definition of the time period in which
parents and children are born and which consists of a 20-25 year. They claim that this bi-
ological definition is not valid at all due to technological developments, changes in career
plans, educational opportunities, and variations in social values, so this term should be
examined sociologically not biologically (McCrindle & Emily Wolfinger, 2017:1).
Generations are categorized differently in different sources. It is mainly because of people
living in different places and being exposed to different events. As Mannheim (1928;1952)
stated generations are not a group of people who live in a specific period of time but are
groups of people who have mutual experiences and backgrounds. In this respect, not all
people born in the same period have similar backgrounds, so they may not have the char-
acteristics of the same generation. Thus, it can be asserted that a generation is a group
of people who are born almost in the same time period, and whose values, attitudes and
life styles are developed in a similar way by specific events within that period.
In this research, the categorization of generations is done as Ayhun (2013), Kuran (2012),
Seçkin (2000), Şenbir (2004), Benlisoy (2008) Altuntuğ (2012), Tolbize (2008) Karp (2002);
Mengi (2009, Kılıç (2012), Habib (2013), Çatalkaya (2008), Susuz, (2012), Çağ (2012), İz-
mirlioğlu (2008), Mesutoğlu (2013), and Topçuoğlu (2007) have done. Thus, 1925-1945 is
called Silent Generation; 1946-1964 is called Baby Boomers; 1965-1979 is Gen X; 1980-
1999 is Gen Y, 2000+ is called M (or Z) (Arslan & Staub, 2015).
