Search results

The purpose of this study was to determine the satisfaction of women who underwent normal delivery and cesarean section (or C-section) with maternal care in five state-run hospitals in Northwestern Turkey.

This was a cross-sectional study. The sample consisted of 580 women who underwent normal delivery (ND) and 392 who had a C-section (CS). Data were collected using two maternal satisfaction questionnaires, which participants completed right before they were discharged.

More than half of ND (61.7%) and CS (56.9%) participants were satisfied with maternal care. ND participants who had received antenatal training were more satisfied with maternal care than CS participants who had not received antenatal training. Higher income was a significant predictor for reduced satisfaction with maternal care among CS participants (p = 0.031).

Hospital administrators and decision-makers should meet women's expectations, provide them with comfort, encourage them for skin-to-skin contact and respect their right to privacy in order to increase their satisfaction with maternal care. Pregnant women should also be encouraged to receive antenatal training offered by hospitals before delivery.

The evidence-based results of the study will help hospital administrators to improve healthcare quality and focus on increasing women's satisfaction with maternal care.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between dietary polyamine levels, metabolic risk parameters and anthropometric measurements in postmenopausal women.

This cross-sectional study was conducted with 562 45–64-year-old postmenopausal women who presented to a Family Health Center. To collect the data, the Descriptive Information Form and Food Frequency Questionnaire were used. In the data analysis, numbers, percentages, mean, standard deviation and multiple linear regression analysis were used.

The multiple linear regression analysis demonstrated that dietary putrescine intake was negatively associated with systolic blood pressure (ß = −0.179, p < 0.001), dietary spermidine intake was positively associated with waist circumference (WC) (ß = 0.142, p = 0.013), systolic blood pressure (ß = 0.188, p = 0.001), diastolic blood pressure (ß = 0.218, p < 0.001), body mass index (BMI) (ß = 0.169, p = 0.003) and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) (ß = 0.156, p = 0.006), and dietary spermine intake was negatively associated with WC (ß = −0.158, p = 0.003), systolic blood pressure (ß = −0.195, p < 0.001), BMI (ß = −0.107, p = 0.042) and WHtR (ß = −0.138, p = 0.009).

Owing to the study’s cross-sectional nature, the lack of succession in the cause–effect relationship, the use of self-report Food Frequency Questionnaire to determine dietary polyamine intake and the inability to analyze seasonal differences are among the limitations of the study.

In this study, an association was determined between dietary polyamines, metabolic risk parameters and anthropometric measurements. The findings suggest that dietary polyamines in human health should be further investigated owing to the increasing metabolic risk parameters.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the arousal of negative consumer emotions as a consequence of fast food consumption among individuals with restrained food consumption. Furthermore, a moderating effect of socio-cultural pressure to buffer these relationships is positioned for the first time.

The field study is completed with data collected through an online survey among 353 customers by employing a random sampling technique. The collected data are analyzed through confirmatory factor analysis procedures.

The hypotheses related to the effects of fast food consumption on body image guilt and shame, body image guilt on planning diet and shame, moderator role of socio-cultural, in terms of shame, are accepted.

A key limitation is data collected from individuals with restrained food consumption in Turkey which limits the generalizability of results to other countries and contexts.

The results call for paying attention to socio-cultural pressures that enhance shame.

The primary contribution of this paper lies in the fact that fast food consumption is scantly related to the arousal of negative consumer emotions. Furthermore, moderating effects of social pressures and Turkish context are also unique to this study.

The aim of this study is to develop a reliable and valid scale. At the same time, it is to reveal the perceptions of HR employees towards artificial intelligence (AI). In addition, examining the change made by AI in the HR department is another purpose of the study.

A scale was developed in this study. A total of 821 observation out of the samples from the human resource managers and employees of the Turkey's largest organizations in terms of capital were analyzed by applying all scientific steps of scale development process. Using appropriate statistical criteria, scale was showed to be valid and reliable. General condition was demonstrated in the human resource departments of large companies in Turkey as a result of these tests.

Human resource employees and managers could have the perception that this technology will save the work done from monotony, reduce the stress experienced to find the suitable candidate and access more candidates with the desired qualifications. It was found that when AI technology was included in training and development process, human resource managers and employees could have a perception that the time spent for training and the lack of attention in training will decrease compared to the traditional method.

The contribution of this study to the literature is the development of a valid and reliable scale. Data collected with the developed scale were evaluated in Turkey.

Introduction – In today’s intense competitive environment, businesses that want to have a sustainable competitive advantage must put the customer at the centre of all their activities and create customer loyalty by offering products and services that will provide customer satisfaction. One of the key elements of ensuring customer satisfaction is the effective handling of customer complaints, which is defined as the customers expressing their dissatisfaction with unmet expectations and unsatisfied needs verbally or in writing. The concept of a complaint as a response of customers’ dissatisfaction with the products and services they experience is an invaluable feedback mechanism for businesses to resolve issues relating to their products and services.

Aim – The aim of this chapter is to emphasise the importance of the concept of complaint as an important part of customer relations management and an effective marketing tool for the tourism sector. As a service sub-sector, the simultaneous production and consumption of services in the tourism sector ensures customer satisfaction more than concrete products, due to their inseparable nature. For this reason, handling, evaluating and finalising customer complaints has an important function and value in providing the necessary information for tourism enterprises to become aware of their deficiencies and mistakes. Complaint management has started to play an even more critical role for the tourism industry in preventing customer losses due to dissatisfaction, especially considering the shrinkage in demand in the sector due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Method – Firstly the concept of complaint and the importance of complaints for businesses were explained, customer complaint behaviour and the factors affecting this behaviour were examined in detail, the concept of online complaint was mentioned and the subject was evaluated in terms of tourism businesses.

Results – While the effective management and resolution of complaints should be seen as a goal by every tourism business, it is vital that they understand customer complaint behaviours, the factors affecting this behaviour and how complaints should be managed in a way that will result in favour of the business.

Conclusion – A complaint management process that enables customers to easily report their complaints to businesses and produces solutions as soon as possible will positively affect customer satisfaction. In this context, in order to reduce the negative effects on tourism enterprises, especially through the pandemic, business need to have clear and easy-to-access procedures, provide a quick response, show reliability and consistency in providing a solution, keeping the complainant informed of progress, have employees who can communicate with empathy and courtesy, have enough employees to deal with the situation, and adopt proactive approaches to prevent complaints rather than reducing the volume of complaints.

Originality/Value – This research contributes to the literature in terms of complaining behaviour, examining the factors affecting this behaviour and emphasising the importance of the concept of complaints in the tourism sector. In addition, the research is important in terms of examining the contributions of an effective complaint management system in reducing the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism sector, which is one of the sectors mostly affected on a global scale.

Cybercrimes increase day by day in parallel to cyber-attacks and cyber-threats. Due to such an increase, required cybersecurity precautions against all kinds of cyber-attacks and cyber-threats should be taken by both organizations and individuals. This study aims to develop a reliable and valid measurement tool to measure cybercrime awareness levels of individuals.

In this study, a scale named as Cybercrime Awareness Scale (CAS) has been developed and psychometric properties of the scale have been tested by two separate studies.

The first study included a total of 500 respondents (294 female and 206 male). In the first study, factor structure of the proposed scale has been determined through an exploratory factor analysis. The results revealed a three-factor structure (i.e. information systems crimes, personal data crimes, and privacy and security). Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients for the subdimensions were 0.95, 0.92, and 0.90, respectively. The sample of the second study consisted of 494 respondents (281 female and 213 male). The confirmatory-factor-analysis results revealed that three-factor structure is valid and optimal model. Further, the proposed scale demonstrated moderate concurrent validity results in relation to the Digital Data Security Awareness Scale.

Findings indicated that the CAS is a valid and reliable measurement tool to measure individuals' cybercrime awareness level. This study makes a novel contribution to the existing cybersecurity literature by providing the CAS, which is developed by following rigorous methodological standards.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-01-2022-0023/

The direction of the causality relationship between Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and economic growth is a highly controversial issue in the literature. There are two basic approaches advocating different causal directions between FDI and growth, which are called hypotheses of FDI-led Growth and Growth-led FDI. The aim of this study is to analyze the causality relationship between FDI and economic growth in RCEP countries and thus make a new contribution to the discussions in the relevant literature. In addition, the results of the study are expected to provide important implications for the policies to be designed for economic growth based on FDI flows to RCEP countries. Thus, by examining the direction of causality between FDI and economic growth in RCEP countries, we aim to provide a new contribution to related literature and make some implications for the policy design process of economic growth in the RCEP area.

We empirically examined the direction of a causal link between FDI and economic growth in the context of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RPEC) countries in order to test the hypothesis of FDI-led growth and Growth-led FDI. Accordingly, as our main variables of interest, we incorporated the inward foreign direct investment stock to gross domestic product ratio (FDI) and gross domestic product per capita (GDP). Hatemi-J (2012) asymmetric causality test has been employed in the investigation of the direction of causality between FDI and GDP over the period of 1980–2020. Thus, unlike most of the studies investigating the direction of causality between FDI and growth using the linear causality analysis method, our study performed a nonlinear causality analysis.

Empirical results reveal that the causal relationship between FDI and national income in RPEC countries is non-linear or asymmetric . The results of the symmetric causality test for both from FDI to national income and from national income to FDI are statistically insignificant for all countries. Therefore, this finding obtained from the study provided an important guide to the econometric methods to be used in other studies to be conducted in the same region in the future. Concerning the asymmetric causality relationship from FDI to growth, positive FDI shocks are an important cause of national income in most RCEP countries. However, the effect of negative FDI shocks on national income is quite weak compared to positive shocks. Regarding the asymmetric causality relationship from growth to FDI, positive national income shocks do not create a significant causal relationship with FDI. Similarly, the effects of negative national income shocks on FDI are statistically insignificant. Overall, asymmetric causality test results reveal that positive FDI shocks have an important causal impact on economic growth in most RCEP countries. Thus, the results of econometric analysis mostly support the argument that the FDI-led growth hypothesis rather than the Growth-led FDI hypothesis in RCEP countries. Accordingly, policy-makers in most of the RCEP countries should continue to provide more incentives and facilities to multinational companies in order to ensure constant economic growth.

Our study brings a significant difference in the econometric method used compared to most of the other studies in the literature. Existing empirical studies on the direction of causality between FDI and growth mostly use standard Granger-linear causality-type tests to detect the direction of causality among FDI and growth. Unlike most of the studies in the literature, our study adopted a different methodological approach, namely the Hatemi J test to detect the non-linear causality between FDI and economic growth in RCEP countries. Therefore, this paper made a new methodological contribution significantly to the literature focusing on the causal relationship between FDI and economic growth by using a non-linear causality method rather than a linear causality one.

This study aims to explore the pattern of urban residents’ socio-spatial distribution in a small-sized city where the local housing market capacity and variety is limited.

Spatial variation was reflected by two different analysis. First, factor analysis was applied to determine the major dimensions of the social, economic and housing environment in the investigation area. Second, Kriging maps, which depict the socio-spatial distribution pattern of the households according to major dimensions, were produced by interpolating factor scores on a continuous surface. Those were supported by complementary exploratory analysis to deepen the discussion.

Homogenous distribution of similar groups to housing areas and low inner differentiation particularly within lower income neighborhoods are the noticeable results of the analysis set. Ethnicity and income differentiation are the principal determinants of socio-spatial distribution pattern in our case. The constraints of the local housing market are seemed to facilitate spatial separation. Disadvantaged population groups are limited to small niches within the urban fabric; they are relegated to poor quality neighborhoods or to unpopular inner-city housing estates.

This research has been performed for the small size city in Turkey and may not hold for other areas, even though the methodology can be replicated and the mechanisms at play are quite similar elsewhere.

The internal differentiation of urban residents’ is worth investigation to develop consistent housing and planning policies to overcome prospective social exclusion problems. This study has a potential of remarking the importance of policy-based economic and housing development in smaller cities in Turkey.

Analyses displayed a sectoral structure of the distribution of urban residents but lower inner differentiation within neighborhoods. Limitations of the housing stock facilitate substantial level of isolation to the extent of ethnicity. Two different ethnic groups are confined to small niches, and they are ethnically and economically tied down to their neighborhoods. The physical properties and the quality of both dwellings and the housing environment are the poorest in these areas, and these are unpopular housing areas by the majority of the population. These findings are supposed to give direction of setting consistent housing policies in the case area.

This research is one of the initial research on socio-spatial distribution of urban residents to housing areas in Turkey. It is also one of the rare examples of socio-spatial differentiation study in small-sized city in the literature. The authors have shown that socio-spatial differentiation would be severe even in small size housing markets as opposed to expectation.

This study aims to examine the perception of military people regarding the use of a network of various intelligent objects, the Internet of Things (IoT), in the future battlespace.

A research model that analyzes military acceptance of the IoT is proposed. The model is created by integrating the technology acceptance model and diffusion of innovation theory. Then an empirical study is conducted through a survey, and the proposed hypotheses are tested. The findings are obtained thanks to the structural equation model (SEM), which clearly reveals the overall dependency relationship among independent and dependent variables even when a dependent variable is an independent variable in another relationship.

The study clearly reveals the significant factors effecting the attitude toward the use of IoT in the military. It also uncovers potential barriers to the adoption of IoT in the military domain. Especially, risk factor seems to have no significant impact on the acceptance of IoT, and also, there seems to be a positive relationship between risk and trust contrary to an expected negative relationship.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first research analyzing the acceptance of IoT in the military domain through hypotheses in a SEM.

The research was carried out to statistically evaluate the relationship between the safety measures at the construction sites and the actual and perceived knowledge levels of the employees about these measures.

Face-to-face surveys were conducted with the workers. The survey included some perception-based questions about preventive measures at the construction site, as well as determining the level of awareness of employees on occupational health and safety (OHS) practices. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistical methods and bivariate correlation analysis.

The actual knowledge levels of workers on OHS measures in the workplace is significantly lower than their perceived knowledge levels. However, there is a positive, linear and strong relationship between the actual knowledge levels of the employees about some OHS rules applied in the workplace and the general level of knowledge they perceive about themselves. Some protective measures such as occupational safety expert, OHS board, employee representatives, training and information activities at construction sites positively affect the safety awareness of employees. However, low-frequency and documentation-intensive activities such as risk assessment, emergency activities and periodic controls have no or weak correlations.

Perception-based opinions of construction site workers on occupational safety issues are transformed into numerical data and analyzed with a quantitative method.