Do Clinical Factors Influence Quality of Life among Renal Transplant Recipients

Every year, many college and graduate students complete their schooling and consider their next step. Some may choose to stay in the region they get their education. Some may return to their hometown. Some may even try out a new place or leave the country. The movement of highly educated individuals can affect the economic development of the region and the dynamics of the community (Frieze et al., 2004; White, 1980). An understanding of the thinking behind individuals' migration desires is important including an underlying processes affecting individuals' migration desires.Many studies of geographic mobility assume that economic are the major predictors of migration. However, economic qualities are not the only determinant of whether people want to emigrate to another region or want to stay in their current location (e.g., Boneva & Frieze, 2001; Frieze, Hansen, & Boneva, 2006; Frieze & Li, 2010; De Jong, 2000; Land, 1969; Mincer, 1978; Morrison, 1967). We suggested the concept of psychological place attachment is one of the major underlying psychological processes that operates behind intentions to migrate. We hypothesize that psychological place attachment mediates relationships between local ties and migration desires. These ideas were assessed by using the newly developed Psychological Place Attachment Scale (PPAS).Psychological Place AttachmentPsychological place attachment is defined as a person's psychological attachment to a place, expressed in the form of affect, behavior, and cognition qualities. This current study adopts this definition to define psychological place attachment as a combination of affective, behavioral, and cognitive attachment. Using this definition, we developed the Psychological Place Attachment Scale (PPAS) to capture affective, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of place attachment. Affective aspects include happiness, love and other emotions and behavioral aspects include proximity-maintaining behaviors such as reading news of a place. Behavioral place attachment also can be expressed in the form of reconstruction of place such as searching for friends coming from the same place or putting photos of that place in one's home. Cognitive aspect of place attachment includes having significant memories, knowledge, and special meaning to the place (Scannell & Gifford, 2010). Adding to the existing measurements, the PPAS is designed to measure the behavioral and cognitive aspects of one's attachment to a place, in addition to the emotional bonding that one feels as well as psychological place attachment independent of place identity. The PPAS may provide researchers an option for measurement tool.Ties to Local Area and Migration DesiresEarly studies identified three main indicators of ties to local area as important predictors of migration desires: residential length, perceived local friendships, and local family ties. For example, Morrison (1967) randomly drew 5,000 records from the Netherlands' data consisting of detailed migration records of residents in 1,009 municipalities. A general negative relation between length of residence and migration desires was identified, indicating that the longer people stay in a place, the less likely they were to consider migrating. Using a similar method, Land (1969) studied data from Mexico and found a similar trend; people with longer residential length were less likely to move away from their place of origin.Another indicator of local ties, perceived local friendships, was also identified as a predictor for lower migration desires. For example, migrant networks, or ties with family and friends' were found to be a predictor for migration intentions (De Jong, 2000; Massey, 1990). People were more likely to want to migrate if their local ties were lower relative to ties in the receiving region.The role of family in keeping people from migrating also is important. Specifically, the presence of family in the place of origin would deter people from migrating away from that place (Mincer, 1978). …