Cultural processes and physical change in Sisli—Istanbul

The cultural change model introduced in this paper covers the cultural change processes and their impacts on housing systems. Cultural processes cause changes in life style learned by the agreed enculturation, acting on the formation of the opinions of the society. Culturation, acculturation, cultural shock, cultural diffusion, transculturation, cultural assimilation are other cultural processes constituting cultural change. The cultural change model for housing proposes that “housing and its close environment physically change in accordance with the cultural processes that are taking place in the related society.” Functions of cultural processes include types of formal or informal housing, urbanization, migration, stratification, life styles, selection of housing equipment, and behavior. Cultural processes have been used as tools to explain the interaction between the above socio-cultural, economic factors and housing patterns of a definite people and place in the cultural change model. A case study was applied in the Sisli–Bomonti region to obtain cultural changes. Cultural processes according to cultural change model were examined in this case study by using the existing results.     

Preventing Child Sexual Abuse: Body Safety Training for Young Children in Turkey

The “Body Safety Training Program” is an education program aimed at ensuring children are informed about their body and acquire self-protection skills. In this study, a total of 83 preschoolers were divided into experimental and control groups; based on a power analysis, 40 children comprised the experimental group, while 43 children comprised the control group. The “Body Safety Training Programme” was translated into Turkish and content validity was determined regarding the language and cultural appropriateness. The “What If Situations Test” (WIST) was administered to both groups before and after the training. Mann–Whitney U Test, Kruskal–Wallis Variance Analysis, and the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test were used to compare between the groups and the Spearman correlation analysis was used to determine the strength of the relationship between the dependent and independent variable. The differences between the pretest and posttest scores for the subscales (appropriate recognition, inappropriate recognition, say, do, tell, and reporting skills), and the personal safety questionnaire (PSQ) score means for the children in the experimental group were found to be statistically significant (p < .001). The posttest–pretest difference score means of the experimental group children for WIST saying, doing, telling and reporting, total skills, and PSQ were found to be statistically significant as compared to that of the control group (p < .05). The “Body Safety Training programme” is effective in increasing the child sexual abuse prevention and self-protection skills in Turkish young children.     

International Migrants' Remittances and Welfare Status of the Left‐Behind Families in Turkey

In this study, micro implications of remittances are examined based on the data from the 1996 Turkish International Migration Survey (TIMS‐96), part of a comprehensive study of Eurostat and the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI). Results of the study imply that migrant savings are generally used for satisfying basic consumption needs. Patterns of expenditures suggest that for 12 percent of all the households receiving remittances, about 80 percent used remittances to improve their standard of living. Considering the variation by regions, it is observed that households in less‐developed regions spent more on daily expenses than those in developed regions. This suggests that daily expenses of households in less developed regions depend significantly on remittances received by households. Moreover, remittances have a positive impact on household welfare; households receiving remittances are found to be better off than nonremitting households. This suggests that migration and remittances have positive indirect effects on incomes of emigrant households. A considerable part of the relevant literature argues that remittances are mostly spent on consumption, housing and land and are not used for productive investment that would contribute to long‐run development. This conclusion often rests on arbitrary definitions of “productive investments.” Access to better nutrition and allocation of more resources to education are, without question, forms of productive investment. Although emigration does not serve as a solution to the problems of national development, it is evident that remittances generate considerable welfare effects, at least for the remittance‐receiving population.     

Determining the Appropriateness of the “What If” Situations Test (WIST) with Turkish Pre-Schoolers

Measurement instruments are needed to assess the child’s sexual abuse prevention program. The purpose of the study was to determine the reliability and validity of the WIST (What If Situations Test) for Turkish culture. Participants were children of the 3–6 age group attending pre-school education institutions and the sample size was identified by means of a power analysis. Seventy children were identified as the sample with 0.85 power and 0.05 type I error according to the power analysis. Language validity, content validity, internal validity coefficient (Cronbach alpha coefficient), and test–retest analyses were conducted in terms of validity and reliability in the scope of efforts for adaptation to Turkish culture. Firstly, Kendall W = 0.83 was the score for the expert opinions concerning the content validity of the language validity scale. It was found that the Cronbach alpha coefficients were between 0.68 and 0.90 for the scale sub-dimensions of appropriate and inappropriate recognition, saying, doing, telling, and reporting. The test–retest reliability of the scale was found to be r = 0.89 and the test–retest reliabilities for the sub-dimensions (appropriate recognition, inappropriate recognition, say skills, do skills, tell skills, and reporting skills) were between r = 0.48 and r = 0.92. The test–retest reliability for the Personal Safety Questionnaire (PSQ), as having complimentary items to the WIST, was found to be r = 0.82. The reliability and validity analysis of the ‘What If’ Situations Test (WIST), used to evaluate pre-schoolers’ skills regarding self-protection against sexual abuse, showed that the Test’s adaptation to Turkish culture was reliable and valid.