# Instruments

## 3.2. Instruments

The instruments used in the study include an Informed Consent Form (see
Appendix A), a Demographic Information Form (see Appendix B), a Canon
Readership Checklist (see Appendix C), a Reading Habits Self-Report Form
(see Appendix D), the Turkish adaptation of the State–Trait Anxiety
Inventory (STAI; see Appendices E and F), the Turkish adaptation of the
Existential Concerns Questionnaire (ECQ; see Appendix G), the Turkish
adaptation of the Mentalization Scale (MentS; see Appendix H), the
Turkish adaptation of the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective
Empathy (QCAE; see Appendix I), and a Debriefing Form presented after
participation (see Appendix J). The following subsections describe these
instruments, excluding the Informed Consent Form and the Debriefing
Form.

### 3.2.1. Demographic Information Form

Through the demographic information form, which was prepared by the
author of this study, participants’ background information was collected
regarding sex, age, marital status, average monthly expenditure, and
formal education level. See Appendix B for a copy of the form.

### 3.2.2. Canon Readership Checklist

This checklist was not designed as a psychometric measure but was
adapted from a national literary list to serve as an index of literary
exposure. Curated by the Turkish Ministry of Education (Türkiye
Cumhuriyeti Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı \[MEB\]), a literary canon for high
school students was officially released to the public on 19 August 2004
through a circular signed by then-Minister Hüseyin Çelik, under the name
of _100 Temel Eser_ (_100 Essential Works_). The circular notes the
reason behind the creation of this canon as instilling reading habits
and aesthetic appreciation in students, improving their language
abilities, and enriching cultural heritage (T.C. Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı,
2004). As for the selection process of the canon, the circular asserts
that it was done in cooperation with various non-governmental
organisations, scientists, journalists, and public intellectuals. For
Turkish literature, only works by deceased Turkish authors were included
to avoid controversy. The canon was modified once on 29 April 2008, with
the removal of Yusuf Atılgan’s _Anayurt Oteli_ and inclusion of Tarık
Buğra’s _Osmancık_ instead (T.C. Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı, 2008).

In the present study, the canon was presented to the participants as a
checklist, who were asked to check the boxes for the works they had
read. The total number of books presented to the participants was 101,
including both the removed and added books from 2008. The total number
of books read by the participants were used as their scores, with
possible scores ranging from 0 (no books read) to 101 (all books read).
Though not a validated scale like the Author Recognition Test (ART) used
in similar studies outside of Turkey, the canon was selected as a proxy
due to its inclusion of a broad range of literary works and the
significant exposure students had to it through formal education between
2004 and 2018. Even after its official rescission in 2018 (T.C. Milli
Eğitim Bakanlığı, 2018), the canon maintains a strong cultural
influence. A copy of the form, including the instructions and all items
is available in Appendix C.

### 3.2.3. Reading Habits Self-Reports

Participants’ general reading habits were assessed using a set of
questions inspired by the reading time estimation section in the study
conducted by Acheson and colleagues (2008). In their study, the authors
created a self-report format to measure the participants’ weekly reading
time across different materials, not as a validated scale but a
practical method for capturing their print exposure.

In the present study, participants were asked to indicate how many hours
they spent reading on average in a week with respect to six different
materials: university textbooks, academic articles (such as
peer-reviewed articles), magazines, newspapers, e-mails, and written
internet content (such as blogs and textual social media like Twitter or
Reddit). The response options were ordinal, ranging from “0 hours” to “7
or more hours”. These items were used solely for descriptive purposes
and were not included in the main statistical analyses. See Appendix D
for a copy.

### 3.2.4. State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)

The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory developed by Spielberger and
colleagues (1970) is a widely used self-report measure distinguishing
between two types of anxiety: state anxiety, defined as “a temporary
emotional condition in response to situational stress”, and trait
anxiety, which is defined as “a general and stable tendency to perceive
situations as threatening”.

The inventory consists of two scales, State Anxiety (STAI–S) and Trait
Anxiety (STAI–T), which include 20 items each for a total of 40. The
items are rated on a 4-point Likert-type scale, ranging between 1 (“Not
at all”) and 4 (“Very much so”), indicating the intensity or frequency
of symptoms related to anxiety. Several items of the scale are
reverse-coded to control for acquiescence bias. For the State Anxiety
scale, respondents are instructed to answer based on how they feel
“right now, at this moment”, and “how they generally feel” for the Trait
Anxiety scale (Spielberger et al., 1970). Each scale is scored
separately, with higher scores indicating greater levels of anxiety. The
scores range between 20 and 80. The STAI does not provide diagnostic
categories determined by cut-off points, and is rather used to assess
the relative differences in anxiety scores across individuals.

Although an updated version of the inventory (Form Y) was later
published (Spielberger et al., 1983), a Turkish adaptation exists only
for the original Form X (Spielberger et al., 1970), which was translated
and validated by Öner and Le Compte (1985). This version, used in the
present study, demonstrates excellent psychometric properties
(Cronbach’s _α_ = .94) and has been used extensively with both clinical
and non-clinical populations, including university students, making it
suitable for the present study’s aims and sample demographic.

In the present study, Cronbach’s _α_ coefficients for the State and
Trait forms were .94 and .83, indicating excellent and good internal
consistency, respectively. Consult Appendix E for the State Form, and
Appendix F for the Trait Form.

### 3.2.5. Existential Concerns Questionnaire (ECQ)

The Existential Concerns Questionnaire (ECQ) is a questionnaire
developed by van Bruggen and colleagues (2017) in order to measure
sensitivity to existential themes such as death, meaninglessness, guilt,
social isolation, and identity disturbance. The scale was developed in
response to the lack of a validated tool for assessing such concerns in
existential theory research and existential therapy settings (van
Bruggen et al., 2017).

The questionnaire has 3 subscales, namely General Existential Anxiety
(General EA), Death Anxiety, and Avoidance. There are a total of 22
items, each rated on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (“Never”) to 5
(“Always”). The respondent’s score is calculated by taking the sum of
their ratings for each of the subscales. Furthermore, as the scale is
unidimensional, an overall score is calculated by summing the ratings
for all items. Hence, for each respondent, an Overall Existential
Concerns, General EA, Death Anxiety, and Avoidance scores can be
calculated. For the subscales, example items are _I worry about not
living the life that I could live_, _I worry about having to let go of
everything at the moment of my death_, and _I try to avoid the question
of who I really am_ respectively.

The Turkish adaptation of the questionnaire was done by Ümmet et al.
(2018), keeping the original’s structure, item count, subscales, and
scoring intact, with a Cronbach’s _α_ coefficient of .81, indicating
good internal consistency.

In the present study, Cronbach’s _α_ coefficient for the overall scale
was .93, indicating excellent internal consistency. The subscales had
acceptable to excellent internal consistency, as the Cronbach’s α
coefficients were .90 for General Existential Anxiety, .84 for Death,
and .73 for Avoidance. Only the overall ECQ score was used in the main
analyses; subscale scores were included for descriptive purposes. A copy
of the questionnaire used in the study, including all items,
instructions, subscale classifications, and reverse-coded items, can be
consulted in Appendix G.

### 3.2.6. Mentalization Scale (MentS)

The Mentalization Scale (MentS) is a self-report scale developed by
Dimitrijević and colleagues (2018) to measure the participants’
mentalisation, defined as the capacity to interpret one’s own and
others’ behaviour in terms of mental states such as desires, feelings,
and beliefs as a distinct construct from empathy, emotional
intelligence, or general ToM capabilities, avoiding the overlap between
these different constructs. The scale distinguishes between two aspects
of mentalisation: self-related mentalisation (MentS–S), other-related
mentalisation (MentS–O), as well as a third factor assessing the
respondent’s level of motivation for analysing mental states, in other
words, their motivation to mentalise (MentS–M).

The scale consists of 28 items which are rated on a 5-point Likert-type
scale. The ratings range from 1 (“Completely incorrect”) to 5
(“Completely correct”). Four different scores can be calculated for each
respondent: Overall Mentalization (by adding together the ratings for
all items), Self-Related Mentalization, Other-Related Mentalization, and
Motivation to Mentalize. Example statements for MentS–S, MentS–O, and
MentS–M include _Often I cannot explain, even to myself, why I did
something_, _I can recognize other people’s feelings_, and _I do not
like to waste time trying to understand in detail other people’s
behavior,_ respectively.

The Turkish adaptation of the scale was carried out by Törenli Kaya and
colleagues (2023) who reduced the item count to 25 because 3 items from
the original study had low psychometric properties in the Turkish
sample. The adaptation retains other properties of the original scale.
After the removal of said items, a Cronbach’s α coefficient of .84 was
reported (Törenli Kaya et al., 2023).

In the present study, Cronbach’s α coefficient for the overall MentS
scale was .86. Among the subscales, Cronbach’s α was .83 for Self, .82
for Other, and .75 for Motivation. These values indicate good internal
consistency for the overall scale and the Self and Other subscales, with
acceptable reliability for the Motivation subscale. The Overall, Self,
and Other scores were used in the main analyses; the Motivation subscale
was included in descriptive analyses. For the complete questionnaire and
its structure, refer to Appendix H

### 3.2.7. Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE)

The Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE) is a
multidimensional self-report scale developed by Reniers and colleagues
(2011), used to measure two distinct components of empathy, namely
cognitive empathy, the ability to understand others’ thoughts and
emotions, and affective empathy, the capacity to respond to and resonate
with others’ emotions. The motivation behind Reniers and colleagues
(2011) creating the questionnaire was the need for a scale that was in
line with the developments in empathy research, clearly distinguishing
cognitive aspects from the affective. Furthermore, the Cognitive Empathy
and Affective Empathy subscales are made up of several components. The
former encompasses Perspective Taking, Online Simulation, and the latter
encompasses Emotion Contagion, Proximal Responsivity, and Peripheral
Responsivity.

The scale consists of 31 items rated on a 4-point Likert-scale, ranging
from 1 (“Strongly disagree”) to 5 (“Strongly agree”). Eight different
scores can be calculated from the responses: Overall Empathy (the sum of
all ratings), Cognitive Empathy, Affective Empathy, Perspective Taking,
Online Simulation, Emotion Contagion, Proximal Responsivity, and
Peripheral Responsivity.

Beginning with the Cognitive Empathy components, Perspective Taking is
defined as “intuitively putting oneself in another’s point of view”
(Reniers et al., 2011), assessed by items such as _I can easily work out
what another person might want to talk about_. Online Simulation, on the
other hand, is “an effortful attempt to put oneself in another person’s
position by imagining what the person is feeling” (Reniers et al.,
2011), which is assessed by an item such as _Before criticizing
somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I was in their place_. As
for Affective Empathy components, Emotion Contagion is the “automatic
mirroring of the feelings of others” (Reniers et al., 2011). An example
item for this component is _I am happy when I am with a cheerful group
and sad when the others are glum_. The component Proximal Responsivity
is defined as the “affective response when witnessing the mood of others
in a close social context” (Reniers et al., 2011), an example item for
which is _It pains me to see young people in wheelchairs_. Finally,
Peripheral Responsivity is similar to Proximal Responsivity, the only
difference being that the target is not in a close social context but
rather a distant context, assessed by an item such as _I usually stay
emotionally detached when watching a film_.

The questionnaire was adapted to Turkish by Gıca and colleagues. (2021),
all the items and the structure being kept as is. The internal validity
of the adaptation is good with a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of α = .82
(Gıca et al. 2021).

In the present study, Cronbach’s α coefficient for the overall QCAE
scale was .88. Subscale alphas were .87 for Cognitive Empathy (with .88
for Perspective Taking and .78 for Online Simulation) and .76 for
Affective Empathy (with .72 for Emotion Contagion, .63 for Proximal
Responsivity, and .49 for Peripheral Responsivity). These values
indicate good internal consistency for the overall scale and most
subscales. Proximal Responsivity showed acceptable reliability (α =
.63), while Peripheral Responsivity displayed low internal consistency
(α = .49), suggesting caution in interpreting results involving this
component. However, this limitation is not critical for the present
study, as only the overall, cognitive, and affective empathy scores were
used in the main analyses, while individual component scores were
examined only descriptively.