Papers by Ahmed Abdel-khalek
BAU Journal - Society, Culture and Human Behavior
Nursing Open, 2020
AimThe main aims of this study were to explore the differences between seven Egyptian clinical an... more AimThe main aims of this study were to explore the differences between seven Egyptian clinical and non‐clinical samples in death depression, as well as to estimate gender‐related differences.DesignA cross‐sectional study.MethodsThe Death Depression Scale (DDS) was administered to seven groups (N = 765) of Egyptian normal (non‐clinical) patients, anxiety outpatients, schizophrenic inpatients (men and women) and addicts (men only) in individual sessions.ResultsAnxiety outpatients of both sexes obtained significantly and greatly higher death depression scores than did the other five groups, whereas the male schizophrenics, the male addicts, and the male and female non‐clinical groups had the lowest death depression scores. Female schizophrenics obtained a significantly higher death depression scores than did male schizophrenics, addicts and non‐clinical participants. Female anxiety outpatients and schizophrenics had higher death depression mean scores than did their male counterparts.D...
Mankind Quarterly, 2014
Results are reported for intelligence assessed with the Standard Progressive Matrices of a sample... more Results are reported for intelligence assessed with the Standard Progressive Matrices of a sample of students at Ain- Shams University in Cairo ( N = 2147). The sample obtained a British IQ of 81. Men students obtained a higher average IQ than women students 0.87 IQ points. Science students obtained a higher mean score than arts students by 11.5 IQ points. Men students had greater variability than the women students..
International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 2018
Personality and Individual Differences, 2017
TheScientificWorldJournal, 2017
The aim of this study was to describe the psychometric properties of the Farsi Form of the Arabic... more The aim of this study was to describe the psychometric properties of the Farsi Form of the Arabic Scale of Death Anxiety (ASDA). The original scale was first translated into Farsi by language experts using the back translation procedure and then administered to a total of 252 Iranian college students and 52 psychiatric outpatients from psychiatric and psychological clinics. The one-week test-retest reliability of the Farsi version in a sample of college students was 0.78, indicating good temporal stability and corroborating the trait-like nature of scores. Cronbach's α was 0.90 for the college students and 0.92 for the psychiatric outpatients, indicating high internal consistency. Scale scores correlated 0.46 with Death Obsession Scale scores, 0.56 with Death Depression Scale scores, 0.41 with Death Anxiety Scale scores, and 0.40 with Wish to be Dead Scale scores, indicating good construct and criterion-related validity. A principal component analysis with a Varimax rotation yie...
Journal of Muslim Mental Health, 2013
Psychological Reports, 1993
The factor structure of Templer's Death Anxiety Scale for Filipino women did not match the pa... more The factor structure of Templer's Death Anxiety Scale for Filipino women did not match the pattern reported for Egyptian women.
BAU Journal - Society, Culture and Human Behavior
Syrian refugees in Lebanon are a major challenge at the social, economic and psychological levels... more Syrian refugees in Lebanon are a major challenge at the social, economic and psychological levels, in addition to the issue of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon in the wake of the Naksaa of 1948. The main hypothesis of this study is that the difficult circumstances experienced by the displaced may affect their personality traits. The sample consisted of 430 individuals, (n=204) Syrian refugees and (n=226) Palestinian refugees of both sexes. All the members of the sample responded to the Arabic Inventory of the Five Big Personality Factors. The inventory enjoys good to high alpha coefficients in both samples, and was administered by 15 social specialists during February and March 2022. The findings revealed statistically significant differences in neuroticism in both the Syrian and the Palestinian samples. Women’s mean scores were higher, while there were no statistically significant differences between the sexes on any of the other personality factors. Upon comparing the Syrian an...
Mental Health, Religion & Culture
Journal of Affective Disorders, 2021
BACKGROUND Research on suicidality in low to middle-income countries is scarce. We addressed this... more BACKGROUND Research on suicidality in low to middle-income countries is scarce. We addressed this issue by investigating suicidality in a cross-national college student samples from 11 predominantly low to middle-income majority Muslim countries. METHODS The sample consisted of 7427 college students (56% female) who reported to be affiliated with Islam. Data on self-construal, social support, negative life-events, acceptability of suicide, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts were collected with self-administered questionnaires. RESULTS Acceptability of suicide and the experience of negative life-events were positively, and perceived social support was negatively associated with suicidal ideation. Interdependent self-construal was negatively related to the acceptability of suicide and positively associated with perceived social support, implying a negative indirect effect on suicidal ideation although its direct effect was positive. The number of negative life-events was the strongest positive predictor of ever attempting suicide. The interdependent self-construal moderated the association of negative life-events with suicide attempts. LIMITATIONS Cross-sectional and self-report nature of the study were its major limitations. Participants may have suppressed their responses about suicide because of religious and legal reasons. CONCLUSION Remarkable similarities across 11 country samples emerged in the linkages between cultural and interpersonal factors with suicidality. Our findings highlight the value of a nuanced approach to suicidality, that can recognize the differences in the processes associated with suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, as well as the need to consider the interplay of a broad range of personal, interpersonal, and cultural influences.
Social Science & Medicine, 2020
Objective The study investigated the associations of religiosity, religious coping and suicide ac... more Objective The study investigated the associations of religiosity, religious coping and suicide acceptance to suicide ideation and attempts in 7427 young adults affiliating with Islam from 11 Muslim countries. Method A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect the data. We used F and χ2 tests and correlation analyses to report descriptive statistics. Multi-group path models with (i) a zero-inflated Poisson distribution and, (ii) a Binomial distribution were used to model the number of occurrences of suicidal ideation, and occurrence of a suicide attempt, respectively. Results Religiosity was negatively associated with acceptability of suicide, but it was positively related to punishment after death across the 11 countries. Religiosity was negatively associated with ever experiencing suicidal ideation, both directly and indirectly through its association with attitudes towards suicide, especially the belief in acceptability of suicide. Neither positive nor negative religious coping were related to suicidal ideation. However, religiosity was negatively related to suicide attempts among those who experienced suicidal ideation at least once. This association was mediated through the belief in acceptability of suicide and religious coping. Negative religious coping was positively associated with suicide attempts probably because it weakened the protective effects of religiosity. Conclusions Findings from this study suggest that the effects of religiosity in the suicidal process operate through attitudes towards suicide. We therefore conclude that clinical assessment as well as research in suicidology may benefit from paying due attention to attitudes towards suicide.
Journal of Educational and Psychological Studies [JEPS], 2014
The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of insomnia, differences between males and f... more The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of insomnia, differences between males and females, and between two age groups, and to explore the factorial structure of the Arabic Scale of Insomnia (ASI). Samples of university students (n=500) and employees (n=457) of both sexes were recruited. Female university students obtained the highest mean total score on the ASI, followed by female employees, male university students, and finally male employees. The salient significant differences were between female students and male employees and between male and female employees. Despite the differences in the prevalence rate of insomnia between the four groups, they all agreed on that the least prevalence rate was for the item: “I feel depressed when it is time for me to go to bed, whereas the highest prevalence rate was for the item: “My interrupted sleep annoys me.” Principle components analysis yielded three factors for each group. Most of their names were not identical. The most...
Psychiatric Quarterly, 2018
There is a scarcity of research on suicidal phenomena in the Muslim world. Therefore, this study ... more There is a scarcity of research on suicidal phenomena in the Muslim world. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating the self-reported prevalence of suicidal thoughts, attempts and motives in 12 Muslim countries. A total of 8417 (54.4% women) university students were surveyed by means of a self-report questionnaire. Overall, 22% of the participants reported suicidal ideation and 8.6% reported attempting suicide. The odds of suicidal thoughts were elevated in Azerbaijan, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, while reduced ORs were recorded in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Malaysia. While odds of suicide attempts were high in Azerbaijan, Palestine and Saudi Arabia reduced odds ratios (OR) were detected in Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia and Tunisia. Taking drugs and using a sharp instrument were the two most frequently used methods to attempt suicide. Only 32.7% of attempts required medical attention. Escape motives were endorsed more than social motives by participants who attempted suicide. Suicidal behaviors were more frequent in women than in men. Compered to men, fewer attempts by women required medical attention. Moreover, our results show that making suicide illegal does not reduce the frequency of suicidal behavior. Results from this comparative study show that suicidal thoughts and attempts are frequent events in young adults in countries where religious scripture explicitly prohibit suicide and the frequencies of nonfatal suicidal behavior show large variation in nations adhering to the same religion.
The present research sought to explore the differences between developed and underdeveloped count... more The present research sought to explore the differences between developed and underdeveloped countries on the Love of Life Scale (LLS). Nine samples (N =3,799) took part in the study. They were university students from Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, Algeria, Malaysia, India, Iran, and USA. Sex-related differences in LLS were significant only in Kuwait (in favor of males) and India (in favor of females). The samples of Malaysia and U.S.A. obtained the highest mean LLS score, followed by participants from Qatar, India, and Kuwait, (males), and India, Iran, Qatar, and Algeria (females), respectively. The Pearson correlation of LLS with the World Happiness Ranking and the Gross Domestic Product per capita was positive, but negative with the unemployment percentage. However, the correlations did not reach statistical significance because of the small number of the samples. It was concluded that the samples from high-income countries tend to have high LLS scores
Psychological reports, Jan 23, 2015
-This study sought to explore the sex and cultural differences in satisfaction with life between ... more -This study sought to explore the sex and cultural differences in satisfaction with life between undergraduate men and women recruited from four Arab countries, i.e., Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Qatar (N = 1,322); ages ranged from 18 to 27 years. The participants responded to the Arabic version of the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Egyptian and Lebanese women obtained significantly higher mean scores on satisfaction with life than did their male counterparts, whereas there were no significant sex differences in the Kuwaiti and Qatari samples. For men, the Qatari and Kuwaiti samples obtained the high mean scores on satisfaction with life, whereas the Egyptian and Lebanese samples obtained the low mean scores. For women, the Qatari sample had the higher mean score, whereas the Egyptian sample obtained the lowest mean score. The results were explained in light of the positive association between gross domestic product and satisfaction with life.
Psychological reports, 2015
-In previous research, Kuwaiti students obtained higher scores than American students on a religi... more -In previous research, Kuwaiti students obtained higher scores than American students on a religiosity scale. For the present study, the self-reported religiosity of Kuwaiti and American students was assessed using a single item. The respondents were 154 Kuwaiti students (M age = 20.8 yr., SD = 2.4) and 154 American college students (M age = 21.8 yr., SD = 5.0; 82% women in both samples). The Kuwaiti students responded in Arabic and the American students in English to the question: "What is your level of religiosity in general?" using an 11-point Likert format anchored by 0 and 10. The high score indicates high religiosity. The Kuwaiti students obtained a significantly higher mean score for religiosity than did their American counterparts (6.5 vs 4.5), indicating that religiosity is more important in the lives of the present sample of Kuwaiti students than in their American counterparts. A single-item self-rating scale may be useful in brief surveys such as epidemiological studies.
Journal of Muslim Mental Health, 2010
ABSTRACT This study explores the personal, social, and personality correlates of happiness among ... more ABSTRACT This study explores the personal, social, and personality correlates of happiness among a Kuwaiti sample (N = 234) of undergraduates. It found that happiness as assessed by the Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI) was significantly and positively correlated with optimism, self-rating of happiness with a single item, self-esteem, satisfaction with life, positive affect, self-rating of mental health, hope, self-rating of both physical health and religiosity, and number of close friends. Conversely, the OHI had significant and negative correlations with pessimism, negative affect, alcohol consumption, and prior suicide attempts. A single, bipolar, and high-loaded factor extracted from the personality questionnaires was labeled Subjective Well-Being Versus Negative Orientation. The multiple stepwise regression revealed the best predictors of the OHI to be optimism, the self-rating of happiness, self-esteem, and satisfaction with life, respectively. By and large, personality traits played the more important role in determining happiness in this Arab sample. Suggestions are made for future research.
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Papers by Ahmed Abdel-khalek