ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It has been almost 6 years short and long at the same time. Writing Acknowledgement seems like a confession. (alphabetical order!) who all have encouraged and supported me throughout this Ph.D. course. I sometimes think how difficult and challenging it would be to guide a student who belongs to three different groups. I really appreciate that all of you have tried to educate me ...

Fitness applications with social network services (SNS) have emerged for physical activity management. However, there is little understanding of the effects of these applications on users’ physical activity. Motivated thus, we develop a theoretical model based on social cognitive theory of self-regulation to explain the effects of goal setting, self-tracking, and SNS (through social comparison ...

Current theorizing and evidence suggest that parenting stress might be greater among parents from both low and high socioeconomic positions (SEP) compared with those from intermediate levels because of material hardship among parents of low SEP and employment demands among parents of high SEP. However, little is known about how this socioeconomic variation in stress relates to the support that ...

This study examines how parents of family and nonfamily abducted children cope with stress due to the disappearance of their child. The results show that all parents experience distress, regardless of whether it was a family or nonfamily abduction. Associated with parental distress are factors such as prior family stress, age of the child, recovery status of the child, and measures of social su...

Previous research has indicated that friends' drinking may influence alcohol use in adolescents and young adults. We explored whether similarities in the drinking behavior of friends of twins influence the genetic architecture of alcohol use in adolescence and young adulthood. Survey data from The Netherlands Twin Register were available for 1,526 twin pairs aged 16-25 years. We categorized the...

PURPOSE of this study was to explore the effect of social support on the levels of anxiety and depression of hemodialysis patients. MATERIAL AND METHODS 258 patients undergoing hemodialysis were enrolled. A questionnaire developed for the purpose of the study was used to collect data through the interview process. Apart from socio-demographic, clinical and other characteristics, the questionn...