Reliability and Validity of the Spiritual Care-Giving Scale in a Turkish Population

This study aimed to adapt an English version of the survey tool Spiritual Care-Giving Scale for Turkish students and to evaluate its psychometric properties. Spiritual care is a central element of holistic nursing, but is not often made explicit in the theoretical and practical components of preregistration nursing programs. A composite scale will assist in identifying students’ perceptions and issues to be addressed in curricula and practice settings in Turkey. The scale was composed of 35 items and five subscales. Cronbach’s α reliability coefficient was .96, and item–total point correlations were between .37 and .77. In addition, split-half reliability coefficient was .88. The Spiritual Care-Giving Scale was found to be a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the multifaceted perspectives of spirituality and spiritual care in practice by students. Further testing of this scale is required with other student populations and clinicians.     

Are your cross‐ethnic friends ethnic and/or national group identifiers? The role of own and perceived cross‐ethnic friend's identities on outgroup attitudes and multiculturalism

We investigated how own ethnic and national identities and perceived ethnic and national identities of close cross‐ethnic friends may predict outgroup attitudes and multiculturalism among Turkish (majority status, N = 197) and Kurdish (minority status, N = 80) ethnic group members in Turkey (M_age = 21.12, SD = 2.59, 69.7% females, 30.3% males). Compared with Turkish participants, Kurdish participants were more asymmetrical in rating their cross‐ethnic friend's identities relative to their own, reporting higher ethnic identity, but lower national identity for themselves. Own ethnic identity was negatively associated with attitudes and multiculturalism, whereas own national identity was positively associated with only attitudes. Perceived cross‐ethnic friend's national identity was positively related to both outgroup attitudes and multiculturalism. Shared national identification (high levels of own and friend's national identity) led to most positive outgroup attitudes and highest support for multiculturalism. Findings were discussed in the light of social identity and common ingroup identity models.     

The necessary impossibility: Dynamics of identity among young people of different backgrounds in Vienna

Identity, the key term during the last two decades in social sciences, is employed for different, even opposite purposes. On the one hand, there are liberal aims claiming social recognition, which usually are summarized under the term politics of identity. On the other hand, there are social movements and conceptions, the objectives of which are diametrically opposed to emancipatory ideas, and which encompass nationalisms, ethnopluralism, cultural fundamentalism, differential racism, and xenophobia. In this field of tensions this contribution is focusing on narratives and strategies of identity among young people in group discussions. Encounters among youth from different cultural, ethnic, and social contexts and with different expectations produce diasporic public spheres, which are neither predominantly emancipatory nor fully controlled, but rather emerging and therefore contested. In our theoretical reflections we challenge common dichotomies and main models of identity; in our empirical approaches we examine the topography and the dynamics of identity as well as “situated hierarchies” of different sources of identity.     

Structure versus process: Mach, Hertz, and the Normative Aspect of Science

In the end of the nineteenth century, there was a remarkable ‘empiricist attitude’ found among certain philosopher-scientists, an attitude which arguably emerged in the main as a reaction to the anti-scientific mood prevalent in the culture that time. Those philosopher-scientists, such as Mach and Hertz, were particularly anxious to emphasize and laud the privileged status of the empirical dimension ofour scientific knowledge, distinguishing it carefully from the theoretical constructions and hypothetical entities that are ordinarily posited by scientists. Yet, as I exhibit in this article, there were certain crucial philosophical differences between these two thinkers with respect to their general conception of scientific theories and scientific norms guiding the activity. I suggest further that the most central difference in this context between Mach and Hertz can justifiably (and, perhaps, more fruitfully) be articulated and reckoned in traditional andcontemporary epistemological terms. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.