Dispositional Optimism and Well-being in Cancer Patients: The Role of CancerRelated Self-Efficacy

Optimistic attitudes of cancer patients are shown as an important personal resource for the psychological and physical adjustment to the illness. Coping styles and appraisals were suggested as indirect pathways through which optimism associates with better functioning in patients. The current study aimed to investigate the role of cancer-specific self-efficacy domains (i.e., coping with cancer-related side effects and stress, maintaining activity and independence, seeking and understanding medical information, and affect regulation and seeking social support) in the association between optimism and physical and psychological (i.e., depressive symptoms) well-being of cancer patients. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 120 patients in Ankara, Turkey. Majority of the participants were female, and about half of them were breast cancer patients. Participants filled a set of self-report questionnaires including Life Orientation Test-Revised, Cancer Behavior Inventory, Multidimensional Quality of Life Scale-Cancer, and Beck Depression Inventory. The data were analyzed separately for physical well-being and depressive symptoms through the bootstrapping method. Of the four self-efficacy domains, maintaining activity and independence accounted for a significant proportion of variance in the optimism-physical well-being and optimism-depressive symptoms relations. Findings highlight the importance of patients' beliefs in their ability to sustain their daily activities for having better physical and psychological well-being during cancer treatment as well as the role of optimism in promoting this particular self-efficacy domain. Interventions are suggested to focus on enhancing cancer patients' self-efficacy in maintaining activity and independence

The Psychometric Properties of Cancer Behavior Inventory as a Predictor of Quality of Life in Turkish Cancer Patients

In the literature, studies showed that self-efficacy of cancer patients are related to their quality of life in different domains. Considering the need of a scale measuring cancer related self-efficacy in Turkish culture, the objective of the current study was to examine psychometric reliability and validity of Cancer Behavior Inventory (CBI) in Turkish cancer patients. One-hundred and twenty cancer patients participated in the study. In addition to CBI, participants were administered Beck Depression Inventory, Multidimensional Quality of Life Scale - Cancer, Ways of Coping Inventory, Life Orientation Test-Revised, and General Self-Efficacy Scale to test the validity of the adapted scale. The results showed that the CBI has a four-factor structure in Turkish culture. The internal consistency of the scale was .91 and the internal consistencies of subscales ranged between .70 and .90. The validity scores of the scale were also satisfactory. The regression analysis revealed that the CBI predicts the patients' quality of life better than General Self-efficacy Scale. CBI is a valid and reliable measure. As compared to general self-efficacy measures, CBI provides more precise information about cancer patients' QOL. The results, directions for future studies and limitations were discussed in the light of the literature

International Collaborative Construction Management Course: A Teaching Case Study

In order to cope with the changes emerged as a result of globalization, civil engineers need to be equipped with advanced communication, management, leadership and social skills to work effectively and lead multi-cultural teams that are not co-located and that work both synchronously and asynchronously. Currently, universities are facing the globalization challenge and in need of revising existing curricula so as to fulfill the requirements of the global construction market. This paper introduces a unique course on International Collaborative Construction Management (ICCM) targeting improving cross-cultural communication skills and awareness of civil engineering students on construction practices in different parts of the world by using a collaborative and projectbased learning approach. The primary aim of this course is to increase the ability of students to function within and lead multi-cultural teams by exposing them to a real international collaboration experience. The course is intended to provide hands on experience on facility planning process and project management techniques. Students are required to prepare schedules, cost estimates, risk management plans and design production systems working with joint venture partners that provide the required knowledge about local construction methods, costs, productivity rates, standards etc. Students collaborate with each other from remote locations via the Internet taking maximum advantage of information and communication technologies. This course was offered for the first time in Spring 2007 and had participants from Carnegie Mellon University at US, Middle East Technical University at Turkey, Technion Israel Institute of Technology at Israel and Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul at Brazil. The specific focus of this paper is on describing the experiences of the Turkish-US student joint-venture team that prepared a bid package for the Eskisehir Light Rail Transit Project in Turkey. Analyzing the weekly logs, minutes of meeting and final presentations that were done by the students, we will discuss the performance of this course in meeting its objectives. We will also present major shortcomings of the ICCM course as reported by the students themselves. Finally, a set of strategies will be proposed to address the shortcomings and to enhance the performance of the course in forthcoming years. The lessons learned in this course provide valuable information for other institutions that aim at educating globally-savy engineers and that perform research on international construction and project management

Teaching globalization issues to civil engineering students – the international collaborative construction management course

Several construction companies have reported that their engineers and project managers are not prepared to deal with the requirements of the increasing globalization that is creating new opportunities with expanding markets all over the world. Construction companies, engineers, and project managers are realizing that their domain knowledge on materials, equipments, construction techniques, management techniques and methods, and social skills are local. Traditional construction management education does not prepare engineers for these challenges. This paper introduces and presents the lessons learned of a course titled “International Collaborative Construction Management” that has been developed and taught to fill this gap. The course exposes students to an international collaboration experience. Students in the US, Turkey, Brazil, and Israel are teamed with students from the other countries, and the teams are expected to present schedules, estimates, risk assessment plans, and process models of a facility to be built in one of the participating countries. Students learn not only how to develop construction estimates and schedules, but also, globalization issues, methods for working on multicultural teams, negotiation techniques, and methods to improve international collaboration enhanced by the use of information technology