Investigation of socioeconomic status evaluation and grouping criterias in medical studies

The effect of social environment in health assessment has been increasingly studied depending on the rising importance of biopsychosocial model in recent years. Socioeconomy is a concept that covers not only social and economical structures of society but also the relationship among them. This study is planned to specify SES criteria and what extent it is used among researches in Turkish Medical Literature and also the relationship between the study results to determine whether the criteria installed correctly. This study is designed as a cross-sectional observational survey. Articles written between years 2004-2014 were scanned and evaluated among Turkish Medical Database of ULAKBİM. SES evaluation criteria were questioned in those articles. In this context, articles having keywords "Socioeconomic, sociodemographic, sociocultural, demographic" in its header or the text were included the study. A total number of 3484 articles were found and categorized according to their text language, type of journals in which they were published, keywords and departments related with. Then number of SES questions were determined and classified. At last the relation between SES criteria and results of these articles were evaluated whether a correct correlation was established. There is a confusion about the use of social, economic, demographic, cultural terms. It is still unclear in which case what is the correct terminology that has to be used. This study is planned to figure out level of knowledge and awareness about SES and whether it is evaluated correctly among medical researches. Most queried SES question was the level of education by %49,7. It was found that 48,7% of publications scanned for this study didn't form a correct relation among results of these articles and SES criteria. Moreover only 22,5% of the researches under surgical sciences formed a correct correlation among findings and SES criteria