An Overview of a Hospital-Based Child Advocacy Center’s Experience from Turkey

The purpose of the present study was to investigate sociodemographic variables, features of sexual abuse (SA), and first psychiatric evaluation results of abused children, and to analyze the relation of the psychiatric evaluation results to the children’s age and gender, type and duration of abuse, abuser–child relationship, and marital status of the children’s parents, at one of the most experienced Child Advocacy Centers (CACs) in Turkey. All data were obtained from reports prepared by child and adolescent psychiatrists. The sample of this study consists of 436 child sexual abuse (CSA) cases who admitted ?zmir CAC between April 2014 and November 2015. The statistical analyses yielded significant relations between psychiatric symptoms and chronic abuse, the gender of the children, and type of abuse. Suicidal ideation and behaviors due to sexual abuse (SA) were also examined. According to our results, it is fair to say that children exposed to SA benefit from immediate psychiatric help because of their vulnerability for psychiatric disorders due to abuse. In this context, CACs are very important multidisciplinary establishments to determine children’s multiple needs to ease their trauma with collaborative teamwork. Psychiatric evaluation should be part of this multidisciplinary context.     

Beliefs about Deliberation: Personal and Normative Dimensions

Democratic deliberative theory has long emphasized the importance of citizen deliberation as a form of political participation and a centrally important component of any vital democracy. Public deliberation and discourse among citizens has been less frequently investigated as a form of political participation than more standard indicators such as voting or volunteering for political organizations. This research examines the extent to which internalized beliefs about deliberation are associated with deliberation outcome measures among a national sample of high school students participating in a year-long deliberation forum, Project 540. Using a multilevel analysis, the research specifically tested the extent to which scales of personal and normative deliberation beliefs, independently and moderated by Project 540 participation, predict key deliberative outcomes (e.g., civic skills, intention to participate in civic affairs). We find that predeliberation endorsement of both personal and normative beliefs predicts increases in certain positive deliberative outcomes, and that these effects are not moderated by participation in Project 540. The implications of these findings for deliberative democracy theory and for developing effective citizen deliberation forums are discussed .     

Robust ridge and robust Liu estimator for regression based on the LTS estimator

In the multiple linear regression analysis, the ridge regression estimator and the Liu estimator are often used to address multicollinearity. Besides multicollinearity, outliers are also a problem in the multiple linear regression analysis. We propose new biased estimators based on the least trimmed squares (LTS) ridge estimator and the LTS Liu estimator in the case of the presence of both outliers and multicollinearity. For this purpose, a simulation study is conducted in order to see the difference between the robust ridge estimator and the robust Liu estimator in terms of their effectiveness; the mean square error. In our simulations, the behavior of the new biased estimators is examined for types of outliers: X-space outlier, Y-space outlier, and X-and Y-space outlier. The results for a number of different illustrative cases are presented. This paper also provides the results for the robust ridge regression and robust Liu estimators based on a real-life data set combining the problem of multicollinearity and outliers.     

Gendered projects of national identity formation: The case of Turkey

The consolidation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 took place in opposition to multiple ‘others’ – that is, multiple ideologies with alternative models of modernity and state formation. An important aspect of the resulting negotiations was their gendered nature. This article explores the multiplicity of subject-positions made available to women using the nationalist literary production of the first half of the twentieth century. By linking literary production with the official discourse, it argues that blurring the distinction between public and private discourses can better capture the gendered character of the nationalist discourse. The analysis details the common denominators between articulations about women's bodies and familial ties, and the building of a nationalist discourse. In these works, typologies of mothers, fathers, daughters, step and adopted ones, and those female figures seen as threats to these families tallied with the ongoing attempts to popularise a particular imagining of the nation. The desired unity of the republic, figuring in these roles, seemed to depend on controlling, taming and erasing a variety of designated identities and ideologies.     

Gender Differences in Sexually Abused Children and Adolescents: A Multicenter Study in Turkey

The purpose of this study was to examine gender-based differences in abuse-related characteristics and post-abuse psychiatric disorders among sexually abused children and adolescents. The researchers retrospectively examined files, judicial reports, and social examination reports of 1,250 sexually abused youth cases. Results showed that boys were more often victimized by penetration, force, and physical violence. Incidence of sexual abuse by family members, familiar persons, and multiple persons was higher among girls. In addition, a higher rate of major depressive disorder as well as alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking were found in sexually abused girls. No difference was observed between boys and girls in terms of post-traumatic stress disorder, conduct disorder, and other mental disorders. Intellectual disability was more frequent in boys.     

Social Sciences Education Practices: Cognitive Perceptions of Prospective Classroom Teachers

Abstract

There are many factors that affect the perceptions of students enrolled in the classroom teaching programs of education faculties concerning the concept of social studies teaching. The most important of these factors are the instructors they observed in the faculty and their previous educational lives. In this context, this study aimed to determine the characteristics of “an ideal social studies instruction” according to the cognitive structures of prospective teachers and to model an ideal social studies instructor according to these qualities. This research was designed as a case study, which is one of the qualitative research designs. The study group was selected by criterion sampling and consisted of 121 prospective teachers in their final year at two state universities located in the Marmara region of Turkey. A word association test, an open-ended questionnaire, and student drawings were used as data collection tools. When the results of the study were examined, the concepts of history, society, culture, people, and geography came to the forefront in the participants’ cognitive perceptions toward social studies. It was determined that the characteristics they attributed to an ideal social studies instructor were gathered under the standard of professional responsibility and informed action. The student drawings revealed that the instructor figures were mostly well-groomed and smiling, they were usually shown in museums and historical buildings. Lastly, as future social studies instructors, the prospective teachers felt adequate in terms of the professional responsibility and informed action standard, and inadequate concerning the content knowledge standard.     

Production and Sales Planning in Capacitated New Product Introductions

How should a firm with limited capacity introduce a new product? Should it introduce the product as soon as possible or delay introduction to build up inventory? How do the product and market characteristics affect the firm's decisions? To answer such questions, we analyze new product introductions under capacity restrictions using a two‐period model with diffusion‐type demand. Combining marketing and operations management decisions in a stylized model, we optimize the production and sales plans of the firm for a single product. We identify four different introduction policies and show that when the holding cost is low and the capacity is low to moderate, a (partial) build‐up policy is indeed optimal if consumers are sensitive to delay. Under such a policy, the firm (partially) delays the introduction of its product and incurs short‐term backlog costs to manage its future demand and total costs more effectively. However, as either the holding cost or the capacity increases, or consumer sensitivity to delay decreases, the build‐up policy starts to lose its appeal, and instead, the firm prefers an immediate product introduction. We extend our analysis by studying the optimal capacity decision of the firm and show that capacity shortages may be intentional.     

Comparison of Goodness-of-Fit Measures in Probit Regression Model

This article examines several goodness-of-fit measures in the binary probit regression model. Existing pseudo-R ² measures are reviewed, two modified and one new pseudo-R ² measure are proposed. For the probit regression model, empirical comparisons are made for different goodness-of-fit measures with the squared sample correlation coefficient of the observed response and the predicted probabilities. As an illustration, the goodness-of-fit measures are applied to a “paid labor force” data set.     

Are Married Women in Turkey More Likely to Become Added or Discouraged Workers?

Abstract. The purpose of this study is to examine the labour market outcomes of married couples to find out which of the added and discouraged worker effects is dominant in urban Turkish families. Using household labour force survey and province‐level data from 1988 and 1994, we look for evidence regarding the dependency of the labour force participation decisions of wives and the employment status of their husbands. On yearly and pooled samples of married couples in their prime ages, bivariate probit estimates indicate that the two decisions are negatively correlated. However, the correlation is found to be statistically significant only in the economic crisis year of 1994. We interpret this finding to mean that the added worker effect dominates the discouraged worker effect.