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).