The main aim of this study is to investigate the effects of a brief psycho-educational intervention for the key relatives of schizophrenic patients, on perceived expressed emotion of patients, and the expressed emotion and burn out of their key relatives. Seventy five schizophrenic patients and their key relatives were included in the study. They were assigned into three groups randomly. The key relatives in the first experimental group were given a one-day psychoeducational workshop and written material package about schizophrenia were provided for them. In the second experimental group, key relatives were only given the written material package about schizophrenia which was the same as that of the Experimental Group I. The third group was the control group received no intervention or any material. All of the participants including patients and key relatives were given the instruments of the study as pre-test. Two weeks after pre-test, the relatives in Experimental Group I and Experimental Group II were invited to the hospital without their patients. The first group participated in the psychoeducational workshop and they were given written material package and the second group was only given the written material package. Pre test was given to Control Group without any intervention. Two months later, the post&ndash / tests were applied to all of the key relatives and their patients. Overall the results indicated that a one day intensive psycho-educational workshop enriched with audiovisual components, written material package about schizophrenia and an interactive discussion part has a positive impact on the key relatives&rsquo / burnout levels, expressed emotion levels and knowledge about schizophrenia. Furthermore, although no direct intervention was conducted with the patients, the results showed that patients&rsquo / perceived expressed emotion levels were reduced as well. The results also showed that simply providing written material about schizophrenia does not have an effect on burnout levels, expressed emotion levels and knowledge of relatives and the perceived expressed emotion of their patients.

The aim of the current study was to test the effectiveness of the written disclosure paradigm on psychological health, cognitive processing, dispositional and social factors and to improve the paradigm on the basis of the underlying mechanisms responsible for its benefits. Participants consisting of 73 Middle East Technical University students were randomly assigned to one of three groups to write during 30-min sessions on 3 consecutive days: (1) Guided Disclosure Group (GDG) / (2) Standard Disclosure Group (SDG) / (3) Control Group (CG). GDG wrote about their most upsetting life events according to exposure, cognitive reappraisal, and benefit-finding instructions, respectively. SDG wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings related to their most upsetting life events. CG described familiar environments without including any emotion or opinion. All participants completed measures of psychological health (i.e., general psychological distress symptoms), cognitive processing (i.e., intrusive thoughts, avoidance, and appraisal of the event), dispositional (i.e., trait anxiety, alexithymia, coping styles) and social factors (i.e., perceived social support, and severity of negative life events) prior to the first writing session, following the third writing session, and a 1-month follow-up. It was expected that GDG would report more improvements in outcome measures, relative to SDG. In turn, SDG was expected to display greater improvements, relative to CG. All groups reported similar improvements in psychological distress symptoms, cognitive processing and alexithymia. The findings were discussed in terms of relevant literature.

The purpose of this study was three-fold / to determine the personality and financial risk-taking attitude differences between sports gambling students and non-gambling students, to specify gambling motivations of the sport gambling students and to identify the relationship among personality traits, financial risk-taking attitude and gambling motivations of the students who gamble on sport events. The subject group of this research was composed of 1109 Middle East Technical University students who were participating in sport gambling activities (n=435) and who had never participated in sport gambling activities (n=674). While males were composing the 63.1% (n=700), females composed 36.9% (n=409) of the total research group. The mean age of the subject group was 21.77 &plusmn / 2.12. Big Five Personality Inventory (John, Donahue, &amp / Kentle, 1991), Investment Risk Attitude Scale (Nyhus, 1995) and Gambling Motivation Scales (Chantal, Vallerand and Vallieres, 1994) were used in the data collection process of the research. Results indicated that sport gambling students and non-gambling students showed significant differences in personality (p&lt / .01). There was significant differences between sport gambling students and non-gamblers in extraversion , conscientiousness and in openness trait (p&lt / .002). Also, results demonstrated that sport gambling students and non-gambling students showed significant differences in financial risk-taking attitudes (p&lt / .01). Personality and gender variables accounted for a significant amount on the financial risk-taking attitude of the non-gambling subjects. Personality, gambling motivations and gender accounted for a significant amount on the financial risk-taking attitude of sport gambling subjects. Sport gambling students showed no significant difference in their gambling motivations according to their gender (p&gt / .01). Sport gambling students were primarily motivated with intrinsic motivating factors of gambling. Personality, financial risk-taking attitude and gambling experience accounted for a significant amount on the gambling motivations of sport gambling students. Finally, this study pointed that university students who were more extraverted and more open were more prone to gambling on sport events and were more permissive towards financial risk-taking. Additionally, results revealed that enjoyment, amusement and learning were the primary motivating factors that lead university students towards sport gambling.

This thesis is an endeavor to develop a more thorough and nuanced understanding of the relationship between international and local actors in the post-Dayton state-building process in Bosnia. While state-building in Bosnia has received a considerable amount of attention and study, apprehension and depiction of the relationship between the international community and Bosnian governing officials has remained relatively homogeneous. This dominant account of the relationship has been that it is a contentious and oppositional one. To criticize the approach I highlighted two of its problematic aspects. These were the conception of the state, in the abstract, as a highly unified and cohesive entity. And, the depiction of internal and external as isolated and fixed actor-identities. The central argument of this thesis is that the international community and the nationalist parties (representing respectively the external and internal state actors) have become united in a mutually advantageous and mutually-reinforcing process of sharing power, responsibility, and blame. This process has been apparently oppositional but effectively cooperative, so that the outcome of twelve years of state-building has been the continued relevance and effective entrenchment of both the international community and the nationalist parties in the Bosnian state.

This study investigates the emergence of a shopping mall based urban life in Ankara. As the city is under the siege with the mushrooming growth of shopping malls, the urban life gains a new attribute. The economical, social, and cultural institutions and activities of the city are collected under the roof of the mall, and distinctions out of the shopping mall are formed and reproduced around the consumption activities of the mall. Based on a qualitative research which was conducted in ANKAmall, this study investigates the shopping mall experience of the different segments of population in terms of income group, age, and gender. Shopping malls present an idealized urban life in Turkey by providing individuals to articulate with Westernization, modernization, and globalization processes in their everyday lives. While the everyday life goes under transformation in the shopping malls through the juxtaposition of irrelevant spheres, they also become the center of attraction for different segments of population despite their restrictive dynamics such as socio-technological control. The subject of the mallified urban life is the consumer, while its culture rests on the intersection of modernization and globalization.

In this thesis, intra and extra European Union-15 agricultural trade is investigated for the period 1985 - 2005. The main purpose of this study is to find out to what extent the two major events of this period, the CAP reform of mid-1990&rsquo / s and the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) of 1995, changed the relative shares of extra and intra trade in overall agricultural trade. The efforts to make European agriculture more competitive and more integrated with the world market have not concluded in a way that the dominance of intra trade over extra trade is relieved. The intra trade still dominates the EU-15 agricultural trade as it has been dominating since 1985. European agricultural market has become more open to world products only in some product groups. Similarly, liberalizing reforms had limited impact on EU-15 countries on individual basis. The shares of intra trade and extra trade remained more and less stable in most of the member states.

In this thesis it is attempted to shed some light upon the limits and effectiveness of the role of the European Union (EU) as a normative power has played in the transformation of Turkish politics especially in the case of human rights issues. First of all, this study reviews the original and current debates over the civilian and normative power Europe ideas, searches to find common elements underlying those accounts and assesses to what extent they offer an adequate categorization of the EU&rsquo / s international significance. One of the main arguments of this thesis is that the EU is generally considered as the catalyst or the anchor of the reform process in the candidate countries to become members. With this in mind, an account of the development of the EU&rsquo / s human rights conditionality vis-&agrave / -vis the third countries and the typology of the EU&rsquo / s human rights conditionality within the framework of enlargement are also examined. The massive wave of transformation with regard to human rights issues undertaken in Turkey during its pre-accession relations with the Union is a case point in this thesis. Within the scope of the study, it is attempted to analyze the impact of the EU&rsquo / s human rights conditionality upon the related state of affairs in Turkey with a view to exploring to what extent and under what conditions it could be regarded as the independent variable of the domestic reform process in the country.

ABSTRACT THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN THE FORMATION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY IN POST-SOVIET KAZAKHSTAN DOgANAKSOY, ipek M.Sc., Department of Eurasian Studies Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. AySeg&uuml / l Ayding&uuml / n September 2008, 114 Pages The aim of the thesis is to analyze the relationship between language and the formation of national identity in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. The launch of language policies in the Republic of Kazakhstan right after the break up of the Soviet Union aim to promote the status of Kazakh language as well as to support its use in state and public life spheres as a means of communication and to foster the national consciousness among the public. Although, official efforts combined with the discourses of the political elites aim to promote the status of the Kazakh language, various factors such as, the demographic structure, the quality of the Kazakh language and the rural and urban dichotomy, hindered the effective enforcement of these policies. The main argument of the thesis is that due to the existing factors which are mentioned above the usage of Kazakh language by the people of Kazakhstan as a means of communication in the short-run does not seem to be attainable. The Kazakh language, within the process of national identity formation, acts and would remain to act as a symbolic tool.

THE PREDICTORS OF RELATIONSHIP COMMITMENT: PERCEIVED PARENTING STYLE, PARENTAL APPROVAL, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL REACTANCE BeSikci, Ezgi M.S., Department of Psychology Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Nuray Sakalli-Ugurlu September 2008, 81 pages The main objective of the current thesis was to investigate the association between parental approval and romantic relationship commitment, and the roles of parenting style dimensions and psychological reactance in this association. Sample of the current study consisted of 166 METU students who had ongoing romantic relationships. An integrated model icluding associations between parenting style dimensions, parental approval, psychological reactance and relationship commitment was tested with LISREL 8. Since structural equation modeling did not provide results as informative as expected, the proposed model was examined as two seperate models. In the first model, the role of parental approval in the link between parenting style dimensions and relationship commitment was examined. In the second model, the role of psychological reactance in the link between parental approval and relationship commitment was examined. The results revealed that maternal acceptance had an indirect effect on relationship commitment via parental approval. In particular, increases in maternal acceptance led to increases in parental approval, which in turn led to increases in relationship commitment However, there was no significant finding regarding the impact of psychological reactance on the link between parental approval and relationship commitment. This thesis aims to make its own contribution to the literature by scrutinizing a) the association between parental approval and relationship commitment, and b) the role of parenting style dimensions in this association. Keywords: Relationship Commitment, Parental Approval, Perceived Parenting Styles, Psychological Reactance

ABSTRACT This thesis examines how Russian political elites and intellectuals have approached the issues of Russian nation and diaspora since 1991. This thesis observes that while Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin claim to advocate a civic definition of a nation in the boundaries of Russia / they extend the definition of Russian nation to cover the &lsquo / Russian diaspora&rsquo / as well. This thesis argues that the inclusion of the term Russian diaspora in Russian discourse of nationalism has paved the way for developing a consensus about Russia&rsquo / s new identity among its political elites and intellectuals. Accordingly, Russia which is defined as a homeland of ethnic Russians identifies itself as the protector of the rights of Russians in ex-Soviet republics. Moreover, this diasporic politics has been used to legitimate the Russian engagement in the internal and external affairs of post-Soviet states. Nevertheless, as this thesis demonstrates, ethnic Russians residing in the post-Soviet states have significant diversity in terms of their political orientations towards Russia. There are five parts in this thesis. After the introduction, the first chapter explains the role of Russian diaspora in the politics of Russian nationalism under Yeltsin and Putin. While the second chapter examines intellectual approaches to the issues of Russian national identity and diaspora, the third chapter focuses on the conditions of ethnic Russians in the post-Soviet states. The final part is the conclusion.