The Effects of Psycho-Education on the Health-Related Quality of life on Mastalgia Patients

Mastalgia has been accepted as an issue which highly affects the daily life. Our primary purpose in this study is to research the effects of the pain in a group of women with mastalgia not depending on the organic etiology of the quality of life. The second purpose of ours is to depict whether psycho-education has an effect on the pain and the quality of life in these patients. In order to research the effect of Mastalgia on the quality of life, the data of the whole study group have been compared with the Turkey standard data of SF-36 scale. A randomized pre–post intervention study was conducted in Adana Numune Hospital General Surgical Department. The study consists of 98 mastalgia patients who do not have any organic etiology. Psycho-education was given to randomly allocated 66 patients (Psycho-Education Group: PEG) and not given to the other 32 patients (Non-Psycho-Education Group: Non-PEG). The Visual Analog Skala (VAS) and the quality of life scale (SF-36) were applied to all patients. All invantories were re-applied 2 months later. When compared SF-36 subscale data of the whole patient group with the norm results of SF-36 determined for Turkey, the difference in the quality of life of all subscales except for physical function subscale was found statistically significant. While no difference was found between the PEG and Non-PEG for the whole subscales before psycho-education, the difference in the whole subscales after psycho-education was found statistically significant. After psycho-education the difference in the VAS scores between PEG and Non-PEG was found statistically significant. Our study has shown that mastalgia has a negative effect on the quality of life. This study has also revealed that psycho-education must be considered as an effective alternative to reducing pain and increasing the quality of life on mastalgia patients.     

Would you post that picture and let your dad see it? Culture,honor, and Facebook

Honor means “high respect; esteem,” but it has different associations for different cultures. In honor cultures (Turkey), esteem depends on one's own perception of self‐worth and on other people's opinions. In those cultures, honor is easily lost and difficult to regain. In dignity cultures (northern America), esteem mainly depends on the individual and cannot be taken away by others. One way to lose honor in Turkey is through behaviors that may be seen as “potentially improper.” Thus, we expected that posting pictures of such behaviors on Facebook (e.g., at a party; with one's boyfriend/girlfriend) and letting others see them would be less likely in Turkey than in the northern United States. Moreover, we investigated whether honor endorsement was the reason for this difference. We examined participants' posting intentions and actual Facebook behaviors. As expected, Turkish participants were less willing to post and let others (especially their relatives) see their potentially improper pictures compared with northern Americans. Moreover, honor endorsement negatively predicted the willingness to post such pictures only in Turkey, especially for women. This suggests that in honor cultures, the concern for losing honor could be the underlying reason for avoiding social media postings that could be potentially perceived as improper. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Breakup Adjustment in Young Adulthood

The purpose of this study was to assess the ability of young adults to adjust to the breakup of a romantic relationship by examining the possible predictors. The sample comprised 140 women and 143 men. Simultaneous regression analysis indicated that initiator status, existence of a new partner, certainty of the reasons for the breakup, and perceived social support were significant predictors and accounted for 18% of the variance in the measure of adjustment to breakup.     

Can the Alevis Speak? The Politics of Representation in Early Writings on Alevism

This study historicizes and contextualizes the contrasting representations of Alevism in the early writings of Stephen van Rensselaer Trowbridge, a Protestant missionary, and Baha Said Bey, a Turkish activist and researcher. Both Trowbridge and Baha Said undertook extensive research on Alevi culture in the early twentieth century. Though their works appear to be “benevolent” endeavors, giving voice to the Alevi subaltern, by first studying the political and cultural backgrounds of Trowbridge and Baha Said, this article exposes the cultural and ideological motivations that influenced their studies. It then focuses on how these political concerns are expressed in representations of Alevism. Given the dearth of postcolonial and critical perspectives on Alevism, investigating the praxis of representation can help trace overtly political concerns beyond their scholarly treatments. Based on Gayatri Spivak's theorization in her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” this paper scrutinizes how these writings negate the agency of Alevis and portray them as waiting for salvation by external proxies – be they Western missionaries or the Turkish government.     

Relationship of posttraumatic growth to symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder and depression: A pilot study of Iraqi students

Posttraumatic growth (PTG) and psychopathology are common outcomes following exposure to adversity and trauma. We examined the relationship of PTG to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression in a group of young Iraqi students with war trauma exposure. These young Iraqis had experienced an average of 13 different war‐related adversities. The prevalence of probable PTSD was 17.2% and probable depression 23.1%. PTSD was associated with higher and depression with lower PTG. In addition, the relationship between PTG and PTSD was stronger among males than females. Although PTSD and depression were relatively common, they were related to PTG in opposite directions.     

Why Do Women Endorse Honor Beliefs? Ambivalent Sexism and Religiosity as Predictors

Cultures of honor, such as Turkey, prioritize defending individual and family reputations, but in gender-specific ways (Nisbett and Cohen 1996). Men maintain honor via reputations for toughness, aggression, control over women, and avenging insults. Women maintain honor through obedience to men, sexual modesty, and religious piety. Honor beliefs support women’s subordination, justifying violence against them (Sev’er and Yurdakul, Violence against Women, 7, 964–998, 2001) and therefore should be challenged. Understanding honor beliefs’ ideological correlates may inform such efforts. We hypothesized that benevolent sexism, a subjectively favorable system-justifying ideology, would more strongly, positively predict Turkish women’s (versus men’s) honor beliefs; whereas hostile sexism, which is openly antagonistic toward women, would more strongly, positively predict Turkish men’s (versus women’s) honor beliefs. Additionally, due to justifications for gender inequality embedded in Islamic religious teachings, we expected Islamic religiosity to positively predict honor beliefs for both genders. A convenience sample of Turkish undergraduates (313 women and 122 men) in Ankara completed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, Religious Orientation Scale, and Honor Endorsement Index. Regression analyses revealed that benevolent (but not hostile) sexism positively predicted women’s honor beliefs, whereas hostile (but not benevolent) sexism positively predicted men’s honor beliefs. Islamic religiosity positively predicted honor beliefs for both genders, but (unexpectedly) did so more strongly for men than women. We suggest that combating benevolent sexism and promoting feminist interpretations of Islamic religiosity may help to empower Turkish women to challenge honor beliefs.     

Use of internal consistency coefficients for estimating reliability of experimental task scores

Reliabilities of scores for experimental tasks are likely to differ from one study to another to the extent that the task stimuli change, the number of trials varies, the type of individuals taking the task changes, the administration conditions are altered, or the focal task variable differs. Given that reliabilities vary as a function of the design of these tasks and the characteristics of the individuals taking them, making inferences about the reliability of scores in an ongoing study based on reliability estimates from prior studies is precarious. Thus, it would be advantageous to estimate reliability based on data from the ongoing study. We argue that internal consistency estimates of reliability are underutilized for experimental task data and in many applications could provide this information using a single administration of a task. We discuss different methods for computing internal consistency estimates with a generalized coefficient alpha and the conditions under which these estimates are accurate. We illustrate use of these coefficients using data for three different tasks.     

Determination of Breast Cancer Fatalism in Women and the Investigation of the Relationship Between Women's Cervical Cancer and Pap Smear Test Health Beliefs with Religious Orientation and Fatalism

Journal of Religion and Health - This study aims to determine breast cancer fatalism in women and investigate the relationship between women’s cervical cancer and pap smear test health...     

An Analysis of Speech Disfluencies of Turkish Speakers Based on Age Variable

The focus of this research is to verify the influence of the age variable on fluent Turkish native speakers’ production of the various types of speech disfluencies. To accomplish this, four groups of native speakers of Turkish between ages 4–8, 18–23, 33–50 years respectively and those over 50-year-olds were constructed. A total of 84 participants took part in this study. Prepared and unprepared speech samples of at least 300 words were collected from each participant via face-to-face interviews that were tape recorded and transcribed; for practical reasons, only the unprepared speech samples were collected from children. As a result, for the prepared speech situation, there was no statistically significant difference in terms of age in the production rates of filled gaps, false starts, slips of the tongue and repetitions; however, participants in the over 50-year-old group produced more hesitations and prolongations than participants in the 18–23 and 33–50-year-old groups. For the unprepared speech situation, age variable was not effective on the production rates of filled gaps. However, 4–8 and over 50-year-old participants produced more hesitations and prolongations than the 18–23 and 33–50-year-old groups. 4–8-year-old children produced more slips of the tongue than the 18–23 and 33–50-year-old groups, and more false starts and repetitions than the participants in the other three age groups (18–23, 33–50, over 50). Further analyses revealed more extensive insights related to the types of disfluencies, the position of disfluencies, and the linguistic units involved in disfluency production in Turkish speech.