2.5 Statistical analysis
When evaluating the findings obtained in this study, IBM SPSS Statistics
22 for statistical analysis (SPSS IBM, Turkey) software program was
used. SSQOL scale scores were converted to percentile scores so as to
compare with SF-36 scores. The prevalence of the lowest (”floor” effect)
and highest (”ceiling” effect) possible quality of life scores in SSQOL
and SF-36 were also calculated. The difference between the distributions
of ceiling and floor scores was examined by chi- square test. The
conformity of the data to the normal distribution was evaluated with the
Shapiro- Wilks test. In addition to the descriptive statistical methods
(mean, standard deviation, frequency), Kruskal -Wallis test was used for
the comparison of quantitative data, and Mann- Whitney U test was used
for the comparison of the two groups. Spearman’s correlation analysis
was employed to examine the relationships between the parameters.
Significance was evaluated at p <0.05.
3. RESULTS
The mean age of the study group was 65.23 ± 13.64 years, and consisted
of primary school graduates (46.6%), married (75%) and unemployed (
84.9%) patients, and 64.4% of the participants were from middle income
families (Table 1).