Investigating the National Thesis in the Field of Yoga in Turkey- Juniper Publishers
Juniper Publishers- Journal of complementary medicine
Abstract
The importance of Yoga implemention in Turkey is
growing and research into yoga implemention is necessary for the
development of a solid knowledge bank on which to base yoga and training
programs. This study is a descriptive study. Descriptive survey method
and content analysis technique were used. A “Thesis Review Form” was
developed by the researchers to examine the graduate theses that were
accessed. The sample of the study is composed of 30 graduate theses
obtained from the National Thesis Database of the Higher Education
Council. The study is limited to the graduate theses on yoga in Turkey
that could be accessed by searching the keywords “yoga”. Document
analysis technique was used in the analysis of the data. The accessed
theses were analyzed based on the variables of the year of publication,
the graduate school where the thesis was submitted, the university to
which the graduate school is affiliated, the type of the thesis, the
variables studied in the thesis, the methods and sample of the thesis,
and the publication status of the thesis. The outcome that yoga research
in Turkey has increased, but many yoga areas have been neglected. It is
hoped that future research will explore these areas and this will
contribute to a greater understanding of needs and requirements of yoga
implemention in turkey.
Keywords: Yoga; Health Sciences; Thesis
Introduction
Yoga, which is an important part of Indian culture,
has become an active method to support the increasing health problems in
western countries. Turkey is increasingly widespread in yoga date back
to ancient times [1].
The conceptual background of yoga has its origins in
ancient Indian philosophy. Yoga is an old application appeared in India
thousands of years ago, which focuses on the mediation together with
physical stance. Yoga is the perfect harmony of body, mind and soul,
achieved by releasing the mind [2,3]. Yoga is now used in many areas.
Many of these studies are in the field of medicine [4-8]. But Khalsa
stated that a majority of the research on yoga as a therapeutic
intervention was conducted in India and a significant fraction of these
were published in Indian journals, some of which are difficult to
acquire for Western clinicians and researchers [9]. Despite a growing
body of clinical research studies and some systematic reviews on the
therapeutic effects of yoga, there is still lack of study for some
country [9-11]. The fields of health sciences had an important role in
the development of yoga applications in Turkey in terms of developing
yoga program across country. It is important for graduate researchers,
to have a general view and knowledge of the studies conducted in the
yoga field, and also about those studies that should be highlighted more
specifically. Furthermore, new yoga studies are continuing
to be in many areas in Turkey. It is important for graduate researchers,
to have a general view of the yoga field [7,12].
Theses and dissertations have great importance not
only due to their role in building the foundation of academic graduate
studies but can also be considered to demonstrate the amount of research
that has been conducted over time. Furthermore, dissertations and
theses contain valuable information from academicians and experts in the
field that serves to enrich both the process and product
[13].Specifically, doctoral dissertations can be considered as forming
the bases of higher education which in turn create researchers
contributing to the profession. Those academic studies have not only a
power of encouraging new studies by contributing the process of ongoing
higher education, but also promoting social, economic and educational
status of the society from which they emanate [12,14]. Although there
are many studies concerning developments in yoga in world, studies
specifying higher education were seen to be scarce. In the current an
investigation of dissertations and theses was undertaken to highlight
the historical progression of the area of Yoga studies, to detect the
deficiencies in the field and determine the necessary requirements. The
aim of this research was to facilitate the further development of
graduate studies which in turn will contribute to the yoga knowledge
base in Turkey.
Materials and Methods
A total of 29 theses and dissertations in electronic format
submitted between 1998 and 2018 (until October 2018) were
obtained from the National Dissertation and Thesis database
using “yoga” , “hatha”, “raja” as the keywords. The documents
comprised master’s thesis, doctoral dissertation, tehesis of
medical specialty and studies. After examination of these
documents 30 documents were analyzed. Most of the studies
were in the category of “Master’s Thesis” (n= 17, 56.6 %) followed
by “Doctoral Dissertations” (n= 12, 40,0 %), “Medical Specialty”
(n= 1, 3,3 %) (Figure 1). The document analysis research covers
examination of written materials containing information about
the targeted facts. The documents were examined by setting
some criteria like publication year, universities, departments,
and subjects.
Results
The distribution of the 30 documents obtained from the
National Dissertation and Theses Database is shown in Table
1. It was observed that the fewest (n= 2) academic study were
prepared in 2011 and 2012, and the most (n= 6) were prepared
in 2016 and 2017). Although a decrease can be observed in the
number of documents in some years, overall, there was a general
increase over the years, and this trend was growing recently
(Table 1). When the theses prepared examined according to their
universities and istitute, it was understood that the theses was
prepared by 23 Universities in total and 3 different institutes
in total. When the dissertations and theses were examined
according to their area, it was found out that the term of yoga
was studied in 12 different areas. Yoga most in turkey Psychology
and Rehabilitation (23.4%) and Nursing (20.1%) were identified
as working in the fields. The areas following these areas were
determined as performing and visual arts (10.1%), psychology (6.6%), tourism (6.6%), religion (6.6%), comperative literature
(3.3%), public health (3.3), labour economics and industrial
relations (3.3%) and business administration (3.3%) respectively.
Figure 2 shows that 39% of the documents were prepared on the
effect of yoga on psychosocial variables, respectively variables
related to physical activity (18.5%), variables related to content
of yoga (18.5%), quality of life variables (12%), variables
associated with theater/film (12%) (Figure 2).
Discussion and Conclusion
In our country, yoga lectures have been studied quite early.
Then it has not been studied in a period of ten years. However,
this is thought to be related to the National Theses Database.
In Turkey master theses and doctoral dissertations began to be
collected in 1987 by the Turkish Council of Higher Education. In
1996, the collection of thesis and dissertation reorganized and
was named the “National Theses Database”. With the innovations
in technology, beginning from the March 2006, thesis began to
be presented on electronic platform. Furthermore, in 2007,
with “Electronic Thesis Archive Project”, the Turkish Council for
Higher Education the National Database were able to offer users
full text of dissertations and theses in pdf format via the internet
[12]. It is seen that major / prominent universities lead the thesis
with yoga. It is seen that the work is still done in universities in
the peripheral areas of yoga Turkey (Table 2).
The increase of interest in this field with the
leadership of the
great universities will increase the number of future studies. The
increase in field-specific studies will form the knowledge of yoga
in our country. In this way, it will increase the importance given
to yoga practice. Although it is acknowledged that interest in
yoga is increasing together with the number of academic studies
about this area, however, a lot of the area has been neglected.
There were no studies on yoga training, culturalism, religions
and online yoga implemention. In Turkey, yoga-related thesis
in many areas from health to art was made. to see the results
of yoga especially health related people will be interested in
yoga area. The effects of yoga on general health outcomes were
evaluated. the effects on psychosocial, physical and life welfare
were studied. However, the effect of yoga on physical health
parameters has not been studied in our country. The increase
in interest in yoga practices increased the interest in yoga
education. However, the provision of yoga training institutions
and persons cannot be ensured. The increase of yoga training in
our country made it easier for those who want to get education.
For this reason, researchers are working in the Master Thesis in their
early years while they are working in their doctoral thesis.
Because researchers in our country now want to be an expert in
yoga. It is a concrete indication that this situation will increase
in the future and maintain the popularity of yoga practice in
Turkey. Turkey yoga training in the monitoring of people who
practice yoga to be more secure, standardization of education is
very important (Table 3).
Acknowledgements
Author has no substantial direct or indirect commercial
financial incentive associated with publishing the article, and that
the manuscript or portions thereof are not under consideration
by another journal and have not been previously published.
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