The debate about the role of the intensity of the stressor has occupied a central focus in posttraumatic stress disorder literature. There is currently a paucity of instruments with established psychometric properties measuring severity of trauma exposure in disaster survivors. The Traumatic Exposure Severity Scale was developed specifically to assess dimensions of exposure to an earthquake disaster in adults. Its 24 items assess a wide range of stressors organized into five subscales, derived from factor analyses: Resource Loss, Damage to Home and Goods, Personal Harm, Concern for Significant Others, and Exposure to the Grotesque. The scale provides both Occurrence and Distress scores. It has good internal reliability and validity. The instrument correlates significantly, but moderately, with a number of traumatic stress measures and the Beck Depression Index.

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The present study investigates whether empirical data support the notion that people in Western societies do not differ with regard to social anxiety. Social anxiety in Dutch students (N = 425) was compared with that experienced by students in the United States (N = 440) and Turkey (N = 349). Social anxiety was operationalized with the Inventory of Interpersonal Situations (IIS; Van Dam-Baggen & Kraaimaat, 1987, 1999, 2000), which measures two aspects of social anxiety, i.e., discomfort in social situations and frequency of social responses. The original Dutch version of the IIS (IOA) was translated into a U.S. English version (the IIS) and a Turkish version (KADE). First, it was shown that the American, Dutch, and Turkish versions of the IIS measured the same construct in terms of factor structure. Second, American students generally appeared more socially anxious than did the Dutch and Turkish students, whereas the latter's social anxiety slightly surpassed that of Dutch subjects. The American students also showed fewer social skills than both other groups, who did not differ in this respect. The results are somewhat more differentiated with respect to the domains of social anxiety, and they are discussed in terms of cross-cultural differences and their implications for clinical practice.

Comparison of the two Turkish studies highlights the emergence of a bulimia factor not present ten years ago. This reflects clinical experience. Moreover the new Ambivalence about Eating factor is discussed in terms of the transitional nature of Turkish society and the role of a culture clash between traditional and westernized attitudes towards food. It is therefore predicted that the prevalence of eating disorders in Turkish culture will dramatically increase in the foreseeable future.

The aim of this study was to examine the direct and indirect relationship between abnormal eating attitudes and sexual abuse. The subject sample comprised 532 female Turkish undergraduate and nursing students in Istanbul. The Eating Attitudes Test (EAT), Sexual Abuse Questionnaire, the Setting Conditions for Anorexia Nervosa Scale, the Positive and Negative Perfectionism Scale and the Need for Control Scale (NCS) were the instruments of the study. The results showed that sexual abuse has a direct effect on EAT-Bulimia but not on EAT-Dieting. It also has some indirect effects on both of these through its effects on family functioning. Perfectionism, on the other hand, was independently linked with both EAT-Dieting and EAT-Bulimia but was not associated with sexual abuse.