Review Article

Investigating the National Thesis in the Field of Yoga in Turkey

Rukiye Höbek Akarsu RN*

Department of Midwifery, Faculty of Health Sciences at the Bozok Universty, Turkey

Submission: January 10,2019;Published: January 29, 2019

*Corresponding author: Rukiye Höbek Akarsu RN, assistant professor in the department of Midwifery, Faculty of Health Sciences at the Bozok Universty, Yozgat, Turkey

How to cite this article: Rukiye H A R. Investigating the National Thesis in the Field of Yoga in Turkey. J Complement Med Alt Healthcare. 2019; 8(5): 555749. DOI:10.19080/JCMAH.2019.08.555749

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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