Determination of hope levels of adolescents with thalassemia major

Bu çalışma, talasemi majörlü ergenlerin umut düzeylerini ve umudun sosyodemografik değişkenlerle ilişkisini belirlemek amacıyla yapılmıştır. Araştırmanın evrenini, pediatrik hematoloji polikliniğinde takip edilen, 12-18 yaş grubundaki talasemi majörlü ergenler ile Muğla'da iki ilköğretim ve ortaöğretim okulunda okuyan sağlıklı ergenler oluşturmuştur. Araştırma, Ege Üniversitesi Çocuk Hastanesi, Muğla Üniversitesi Eğitim ve Araştırma Hastanesi, S.B. Dr. Behçet Uz Çocuk Hastalıkları ve Cerrahisi Eğitim ve Araştırma Hastanesi, S.B. Tepecik Eğitim ve Araştırma Hastanesi, S.B. Aydın Devlet Hastanesi ve S.B. Denizli Devlet Hastanesi'nin Pediatrik Hematoloji polikliniğinde ve MEB Muğla 75.yıl İlköğretim Okulu'nun ikinci kademesinde ve Turgut Reis Anadolu Lisesi'nde yapılmıştır. Araştırma örneklemini olasılıksız örnekleme yöntemi ile seçilen, 12-18 yaş grubunda 112 talasemi majörlü ergen (vaka grubu) ve talasemi majörlü ergenlerin yaş ve cinsiyet özelliklerine göre eşleştirilen 12-18 yaş grubunda 121 sağlıklı ergen (kontrol grubu) oluşturmuştur. Araştırmanın verileri, Talasemi Majörlü Ergenler İçin Sosyodemografik Veri Formu, Sağlıklı Ergenler İçin Sosyodemografik Veri Formu ve Ergenler İçin Umutluluk Ölçeği ile toplanmıştır. Veriler, tanımlayıcı istatistikler, Student t-testi, Ki-kare testi, Mann Whitney U testi, Kruskal-Wallis testi, Varyans analizi ve regresyon analizi ile değerlendirilmiştir. Talasemi majörlü ergenlerin umutluluk ölçeği puan ortalaması sağlıklı ergenlerin umutluluk ölçeği puan ortalamaları arasındaki istatistiksel olarak anlamlı fark bulunmamıştır (p>0,05). Talasemi majörlü ergenlerin; cinsiyet, yaş grupları, öğrenim durumları, aile tipi, kardeş sayısı, yaşadıkları yer, aile gelir durumu, anne-babaların yaş grupları, anne-babaların çalışma durumu ve annelerin öğrenim durumlarına göre umutluluk ölçeği puan ortalamaları arasında anlamlı bir fark olmadığı belirlenmiştir (p>0,05). Çoklu regresyon analizi sonucu babalarının ilkokul/ortaokul mezunu olmasının, ergenlerin düşük umutluluk puanı ile ilişkili olduğu (p0,05). Bu sonuçlara göre talasemi majörlü ergenlerin umut düzeylerini artırmaya yönelik Pediatri hemşireleri girişimler planlamalı ve umut düzeyleri ile ilişkili risk faktörlerinin belirlenmesi için sağlık profesyonellerinin farkındalığı artırılmalıdır.This study was planned with the aim of determining hope levels and its relationship between socio-demographic variables of adolescents with thalassemia major. The universe of study, pediatric hematology outpatient clinics followed with thalassemia major adolescents 12-18 years age group and healthy adolescents both primary and secondary schools in Muğla City. This research was conducted at the following places: Ege University Childen's Hospital, Education and Research Hospital of children's health and surgery Dr. Behçet Uz, Tepecik Education and Research Hospital, Pediatric Hematology Clinics of Aydın and Denizli State Hospitals and in the second stage of Muğla 75th Anniversary Primary School and Turgut Reis Anatolian High School.The research sample consisted, 112 thalassemia major adolescents in 12-18 years age group selected with improbability sampling method (study group) and 121 healthy adolescents in 12-18 years age group (control group) matched with the thalassemic adolescents' age and gender. Research data were collected by socio-demographic questionnaire for Adolescents with thalassemia, and Hopefulness Scale for Adolescents. Data were evaluated by descriptive statistics, Student's t-test, Chi-square test, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test, variance and regression analysis. There were not statistically significant difference Hopefulness Scale for Adolescents scale mean scores between the adolescents with thalassemia and healthy adolescents (p>0.05). Statistically significant difference was determined between Hopefulness Scale for Adolescents scale mean scores and educational status, family type, number of siblings, place of residence, family income, parents' age, parents' employment status and the education level of mothers of adolescents with thalassemia major (p>0.05). According to multiple regression analysis; adolescents' fathers graduation level which elementary/ junior school was associated with lower Hopefulness Scale for Adolescents scale scores (p<0.05) and adolescents' mothers graduation level which elementary/ junior school, being lost a close because of thalassemia, having blood transfusion in two weeks range were not associated with lower Hopefulness Scale for Adolescents scale scores of adolescents (p<0.05). According to these results, nurses should plan interventions for increasing hope levels of adolescents with thalassemia major and awareness level of health care professionals should be increased about the identification of risk factors associated with hope levels

The effect of grade retention on school outcomes: an application of doubly robust estimation method

"In this study, I estimate the average causal treatment effect of grade retention on several educational outcome variables, such as completion of upper secondary school, graduation grades in math and German, as well as average final grade using a data set from Germany. The analysis relies on Conditional Independence Assumption. I use doubly robust method, regression adjustment and inverse propensity score weighting. The results of the empirical study show that grade retention does not improve the students' educational achievement." (author's abstract

NEGATIVE FEELINGS OF TURKISH STUDENTS IN EFL LEARNING PROCESS

The students might have either negative or positive feelings for different components of foreign language process. While positive feelings and emotions support the language acquisition process and push the students to learn the language, negative feelings block the process as they cause the learner to erect barriers to learning a foreign language. In case this process is directed by a teacher who is aware of the barriers of the students and sensitive to them, it is possible to replace negative feelings with the positive ones. The purpose of the current study is to reveal the sources of the negative feelings which hinder EFL learning process of the students in English language preparatory program in Eskişehir Osmangazi University Foreign Languages Department. Case study research design was used in order to examine the phenomenon of underlying reasons of negative feelings students associate with language learning process. Self-reports of the participants constituted the data source of the study. The data of the study was gathered through the interviews conducted with 31 students and 20 English instructors and the data gathered was analyzed inductively. The findings revealed four categories that represent the sources of students’ negative feelings: teacher-oriented negative feelings, classroom oriented negative feelings, and system oriented negative feelings and student-oriented negative feelings. The results imply a need for instructional design studies targeting to incorporate affective domain variables into teacher education programs and in-service training programs. Also, suggestions for future research are presented.  Article visualizations

Savunulabilir bir akademik amaçlı İngilizce öğretim programına yönelik ihtiyaç analizi

This paper reports on the process and findings of curriculum development towards a defensible EAP curriculum in the Department of Foreign Languages at Eskisehir Osmangazi University. In addition, it illustrates the evaluation of newly introduced innovations by the students. The study was designed as a curriculun development project which was based on Brown’s needs analysis (NA) framework. The NA studies were conducted in 2016-2017 academic year with the students and the teaching staff employed in the department. Focus group technique was used to take the opinions of the teaching staff about the components of the curriculum, and the opinions of the students were taken through workshops. In 2016-2017 academic year, repeat students’ opinions about the innovated curriculum were taken through an open-ended questionnaire. The data were analyzed by using thematic content analysis technique. The emerging themes in the NA study are (a) need for clarification of the program objectives, (b) need for revision of teaching materials, (c) need for improvement in teaching and learning practices, and (d) need for improvement in assessment practices. The emerging themes in the evaluation of the NA study based on the openended questionnaire are ‘materials’, ‘assessment procedures’, and ‘overall structure of the EAP curriculum’.Bu çalışma Eskişehir Osmangazi Üniversitesi Yabancı Diller Bölümü İngilizce Hazırlık Programının geliştirilmesi kapsamında gerçekleştirilen ihtiyaç analizi çalışması sonuçlarını ve ihtiyaç analizi sonucunda yapılan yeniliklerin öğrenciler tarafından değerlendirilmesini kapsamaktadır. Çalışma Brown’un ihtiyaç analizi çerçevesine dayalı olarak gerçekleştirilen bir program geliştirme projesi olarak tasarlanmıştır. İhtiyaç analizi çalışmaları 2016- 2017 akademik yılında bölümde öğrenim gören öğrenciler ve öğretim elemanları ile gerçekleştirilmiştir. Öğretim elemanlarının öğretim programına ilişkin görüşleri odak grup görüşmeleri yolu ile alınırken, öğrenci görüşlerinin alınabilmesi için çalıştay tekniği kullanılmıştır. Ayrıca ihtiyaç analizi sonucunda gerçekleştirilen yeniliklerin değerlendirilmesi için 2016-2017 akademik yılının sonunda tekrar öğrencilerine açık uçlu bir anket uygulanmıştır ve tekrar öğrencilerinin görüşleri alınmıştır. Çalışmanın verileri tematik içerik analizi yoluyla analiz edilmiştir. İhtiyaç analizi çalışmasının sonuçları 4 tema altında sunulmuştur. Bu temalar şu biçimdedir: (a) programın amaçlarının belirlenmesine ilişkin ihtiyaçlar, (b) öğretim materyallerinin yeniden düzenlenmesine ilişkin ihtiyaçlar, (c) öğrenmeöğretme süreçlerinin geliştirilmesine ilişkin ihtiyaçlar ve (d) ölçme değerlendirme süreçlerinin geliştirilmesine ilişkin ihtiyaçlar. İhtiyaç analizi çalışmasının değerlendirilmesine ilişkin açık uçlu anket sonuçlarına göre ortaya çıkan temalar şu biçimdedir: ‘öğretim materyalleri’, ‘ölçme değerlendirme süreçleri’ ve ‘akademik amaçlı İngilizce öğretim programının genel yapısı’

Automatic classification of EFL learners’ self-reported text documents along an affective continuum

This study aims to place EFL learners along an affective continuum via machine learning methods and present a new dataset about affective characteristics of EFL learners. In line with the purposes, written self-reports of 475 students from 5 different faculties in 3 universities in Turkey were collected and manually assigned by the researchers to one of the labels (positive, negative, or neutral). As a result, two combinations of the same dataset (AC-2 and AC-3) including different numbers of classes were used for the assessment of automatic classification approaches. Results revealed that automatic classification confirmed the manual classification to a great extent and machine learning methods could be used to classify EFL students along an affective continuum according to their affective characteristics. Maximum accuracy rate of automatic classification is 90.06% on AC-2 dataset including two classes. Similarly, on AC-3 dataset including three classes, maximum accuracy rate of classification is 71.79%. Last, the top-10 features/words obtained by feature selection methods are highly discriminative in terms of assessing student feelings for EFL learning. It could be stated that there is not an existing study in which feature selection methods and classifiers are used in the literature to automatically classify EFL learners’ feelings

The Effect of Grade Retention on School Outcomes: An Application of Doubly Robust Estimation Methods

In this study, I estimate the average causal treatment effect of grade retention on several educational outcome variables, such as completion of upper secondary school, graduation grades in math and German, as well as average final grade using a data set from Germany. The analysis relies on Conditional Independence Assumption. I use doubly robust method, regression adjustment and inverse propensity score weighting. The results of the empirical study show that grade retention does not improve the students' educational achievement

MOTIVATIONAL STRATEGIES USED IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING: A META-SYNTHESIS STUDY

Motivational strategies help students attain the goals to learning language and determine their ultimate success. Since motivation is a personal phenomenon, there are different ways to motivate each student. However, there is scant body of literature on potential usefulness of these strategies to Turkish students learning English language. The purpose of the study is to analyze the existing studies having investigated motivational strategies used in English Language Teaching in Turkey through meta-synthesis method and to reveal the tendency in Turkish literature. Meta-synthesis studies seek to understand and explain a particular phenomenon through the synthesis of individual studies conducted on a particular subject. Synthesis of the studies included into the research reveals potential research topics for the researchers. The findings obtained from the results of the study are explained and discussed in accordance with the research questions. Lastly, potential research areas are suggested for future researches.  Article visualizations

Doubly Robust Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects Using Inverse Probability Weighted Regression Adjustment

We revisit the problem of estimating the local average treatment effect (LATE) and the local average treatment effect on the treated (LATT) when control variables are available, either to render the instrumental variable (IV) suitably exogenous or to improve precision. Unlike previous approaches, our doubly robust (DR) estimation procedures use quasi-likelihood methods weighted by the inverse of the IV propensity score - so-called inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) estimators. By properly choosing models for the propensity score and outcome models, fitted values are ensured to be in the logical range determined by the response variable, producing DR estimators of LATE and LATT with appealing small sample properties. Inference is relatively straightforward both analytically and using the nonparametric bootstrap. Our DR LATE and DR LATT estimators work well in simulations. We also propose a DR version of the Hausman test that compares different estimates of the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) under one-sided noncompliance

Abadie's Kappa and Weighting Estimators of the Local Average Treatment Effect

In this paper we study the finite sample and asymptotic properties of various weighting estimators of the local average treatment effect (LATE), several of which are based on Abadie (2003)'s kappa theorem. Our framework presumes a binary endogenous explanatory variable ("treatment") and a binary instrumental variable, which may only be valid after conditioning on additional covariates. We argue that one of the Abadie estimators, which we show is weight normalized, is likely to dominate the others in many contexts. A notable exception is in settings with one-sided noncompliance, where certain unnormalized estimators have the advantage of being based on a denominator that is bounded away from zero. We use a simulation study and three empirical applications to illustrate our findings. In applications to causal effects of college education using the college proximity instrument (Card, 1995) and causal effects of childbearing using the sibling sex composition instrument (Angrist and Evans, 1998), the unnormalized estimates are clearly unreasonable, with "incorrect" signs, magnitudes, or both. Overall, our results suggest that (i) the relative performance of different kappa weighting estimators varies with features of the data-generating process; and that (ii) the normalized version of Tan (2006)'s estimator may be an attractive alternative in many contexts. Applied researchers with access to a binary instrumental variable should also consider covariate balancing or doubly robust estimators of the LATE

Covariate Balancing and the Equivalence of Weighting and Doubly Robust Estimators of Average Treatment Effects

We show that when the propensity score is estimated using a suitable covariate balancing procedure, the commonly used inverse probability weighting (IPW) estimator, augmented inverse probability weighting (AIPW) with linear conditional mean, and inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) with linear conditional mean are all numerically the same for estimating the average treatment effect (ATE) or the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT). Further, suitably chosen covariate balancing weights are automatically normalized, which means that normalized and unnormalized versions of IPW and AIPW are identical. For estimating the ATE, the weights that achieve the algebraic equivalence of IPW, AIPW, and IPWRA are based on propensity scores estimated using the inverse probability tilting (IPT) method of Graham, Pinto and Egel (2012). For the ATT, the weights are obtained using the covariate balancing propensity score (CBPS) method developed in Imai and Ratkovic (2014). These equivalences also make covariate balancing methods attractive when the treatment is confounded and one is interested in the local average treatment effect