Social inequalities and health: A sociological research in Eskişehir

The aim of this thesis is to examine whether social and economic status cause significant difference on health-related perceptions, attitudes and behaviors and self reported health status. It also tries to examine how these variables differ if a significant difference occurs. The research depends on fieldwork conducted in Eskisehir, Turkey in 2009 and 2010. The research is a quantitative one and has both descriptive and explanatory aims. The data was gathered by 229 structured interviews and 126 questionnaires, analyzed by SPSS and reinforced by 6 depth and 2 focus group interviews.The findings reveals that the way of defining both health and illness, the source of health related knowledge, the criteria of application to health institutions, number of pregnancies, ratio of received health care prior to birth and ratio of hospital births show significance difference according to income and education levels and the characteristic of living place (rural/urban). Self reported health status and the level of embarrassment feeling in medical examinations also shows significance differences according to income and education levels, gender and the characteristic of living place. The evaluation towards some recent developments in health care system and the general adequacy of the health care system in Turkey and the satisfaction from health care staff?s behaviors show important differences according to the level income and education.The findings show that the distribution health risks, level and form of access to health care services are distributed unequally in society and the evaluation towards health institutions, health care staff and adequacy of health care services in general differ according to the unequal distribution. Although health institutions have been uniformed and thus legal hierarchy has reduced, findings point out that the hierarchical structure in health area does not exclusively depent on the legislation that formerly used to distinct health care institutions. People with different economic and social status have dissimilar relations with institutional medicine and health care staff and the hierarchical structure in health area is shaped by a wide range of factors. Social inequalities display a cumulative pattern, the groups who are disadvantaged due to economic, regional and gender inequities continue to remain disadvantaged groups in regard to health risks and access to health care services.