A Comparison of the Healthcare Indicators of Turkey and The European Union Members Countries Using Multidimensional Scaling Analysis and Cluster Analysis

This study investigates the position of Turkey compared to the member countries of the European Union in terms of healthcare indicators and aims to determine its similarities and/or differences from them. Multidimensional Scaling Analysis (MDSA) and Non-Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (NHCA) have been applied to the data obtained from the 2010 World Health Report for Turkey and the 27 European member countries for seven healthcare indicators. Based on the results of the MDSA, the countries were classified into three different groups in two-dimensional space according to the analyzed health variables. For healthcare indicators, Turkey was placed in the same group as Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. Turkey was dissimilar to Luxembourg, France, Sweden, Austria and Germany and was most similar to Romania and Bulgaria with respect to the analyzed health parameters. As to the results of the NHCA, the countries were divided into four clusters according to their healthcare indicators. Turkey was placed in the same cluster as Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Poland and Romania. Countries in the same clusters /groups were similar to one another for both techniques.