**3. Material and methods**

The research was consisted of COPD patients who were ambulatory examined and checked at the pulmonary clinics of a state hospital between February and June 2009. The sample of the research was made up by 300 patients with COPD who accepted to participate. Participants were selected according to the following criteria; had been diagnosed of COPD, aged 18 years or older, understand, and communicate in Turkish, did not have any communicational and psychiatric problems. Written approvals from the hospital and oral consents from the patients were obtained. The data of the research were collected using face to face interview technique, personal information form, Medical Research Council Dyspnea Scale (MRC) and Brief Fatigue Inventory (BFI).

Data were entered into SPSS software (v. 14.0; SPSS Inc.,Chicago, IL) and recoded as required according to the questionnaires' scoring instructions. The data analysis was performed through percentage distribution, ANOVA, t test and Pearson's Correlation Analysis and p<0.05 was accepted as statistically significant.
