THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGICAL SYMPTOMS AND SELF-ESTEEM OF THE STUDENTS FROM TURKISH AND TURKIC SOCIETIES IN TURKEY.

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between psychological symptoms and self-esteem of students from Turkish and Turkic Societies who are studying in Turkey. The study has a survey research design. The study group consists of 207 university students from Turkish and Turkic Societies (23 females and 184 males). For data collection two instruments were used. The first was a "Self-Esteem Scale" which was developed by Arıcak (1999). The second instrument was a Psychological Symptoms Checklist (SCL-90-R) developed by Derogatis and Cleary (1977). Turkish validity and reliability studies of the checklist were conducted by a variety of researchers (Tufan, 1987; Kiliç,1987; Dağ, 1991; Vergili and Ebru, 1998). The research results indicate a negative correlation between self-esteem and somatisation, anxiety, obsession, depression, interpersonal sensitivity, paranoid thinking, anger, phobic and general symptoms index of students from Turkish and Turkic Societies. Psychological symptoms of students from Turkish and Turkic Societies significantly explained their self-esteem. Moreover, anger, obsession and psychotic symptoms, respectively, were important predictors of self-esteem. The research results revealed that almost 50% of these students showed psychological symptoms at various levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]