ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: Child abuse combines emotional, physical, sexual, and neglect aspects of violence, thus diversifying the trauma for a child. Publications about child abuse had been discussed in academia for long years and evaluated by bibliometric analysis, frequently. This study aims to evaluate the most discussed/disseminated scientific publications about child abuse in electronic media such as social media accounts, blogs, podcasts, and media news sites using a new analysis method called altmetric analysis. METHODS: The data were obtained from the Altmetric Explorer database using the phrase "child abuse," in 2021. After being ranked by altmetric attention score (AAS), descriptive statistics for all publications as well as detailed analyses for the first-100 publications were performed. Variables evaluated were AAS, dimensions-badge value, distribution of web sources, demographic/geographic-breakdown type distributions, main subject categories, and mesh terms. Kruskal Wallis test was used for AAS and dimensions-badge value comparisons while Spearman correlations and regression analysis were also performed. Analyses were performed by SPSS 23.0 (IBM SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) and p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: Publications about child abuse were shared extensively on social media, mostly on Twitter. In terms of the main subject, sexual abuse was the trending topic, followed by physical abuse and maltreatment. Psychology, studies in human society, health sciences, and law/legal issues were the four main science categories about the subject. The United States was the major disseminator of publications while Child Abuse and Neglect was the most productive journal. There was a weak but significant (p<0.05) positive correlation between AAS and dimensions-badge values. CONCLUSION: Child abuse is a multidimensional subject in social media. As the number of publications increases, the possibility of articles to be shared on different social media platforms also increases. The majority of the top-100 publications are the ones emphasizing the importance of child abuse in terms of the prevalence, individual/social burden, and negative consequences.
ABSTRACT
Scarce data exist concerning the prevalence of irritable bowel syndrome in adolescence. Changes in lifestyle, presence of stressors and psychological vulnerability during this stage of life place adolescents in the risk group for irritable bowel syndrome. The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of irritable bowel syndrome in adolescents who are about to begin their university studies and to identify lifestyle and psychological factors related to irritable bowel syndrome. All students newly enrolled at Abant Izzet Baysal University during the 2005-2006 academic year were recruited. Questionnaires including the Rome II questionnaire, the Beck Depression Inventory and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory were sent to the addresses of the eligible students before matriculation to the university. A total of 2217 students completed the questionnaires, of which 2038 (91.9%) were regarded as valid. Irritable bowel syndrome prevalence was 10.8% and was significantly higher in females than in males (14.0% vs. 7.1%, p<0.001). In logistic regression analyses, gender (OR=2.48, 95% CI=1.68-3.66) and depression (OR=1.08, 95% CI=1.04-1.12) were significantly linked to irritable bowel syndrome. The prevalence of irritable bowel syndrome in this adolescent population is similar to that reported in other studies. The association of irritable bowel syndrome with depression should guide preventive and therapeutic efforts for this specific age group.
