Dimensions of the Social Environment: Psychosocial

Overview

There has been scientific interest in social life organization of and the implications of interpersonal and group interactions for emotional and physical health status (House and Landis and Umberson 1988; Yen and Syme 1999). Research in the 1970s on social support suggested a health-enhancing role for social relationships in buffering the ill effects of stress (Cassel 1976), and subsequent studies confirmed an inverse relationship between social relationships and mortality risk (House and Robbins and Metzner 1982; Schoenbach et al. 1986).

More recently, aspects of social interactions and relationships have been increasingly conceptualized as forms of social capital, although there is widespread disagreement about the meaning of the term and the level of aggregation at which it operates (Lynch et al. 2000b; Woolcock 2001). Portes (1998) defines social capital as "the ability of actors to secure benefits by virtue of membership in social networks or other social structures." Coleman (1988) sees social capital as a resource for organizations as well as individuals: "Social capital is defined by its function. It is not a single entity but a variety of different entities, with two elements in common: they all consist of some aspect of social structures, and they facilitate certain actions of actors—whether persons or corporate actors—within the structure. Like other forms of capital, social capital is productive, making possible to achieve certain ends that in its absence would not be possible." Putnam et al. (1993) considers social capital broadly as "features of social organization, such as trust, norms, and networks that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions."

Social capital has been operationalized in different ways in health–related research. Per capita membership in groups and associations has been used to assess civic engagement (Kawachi et al. 1997; Kawachi and Kennedy and Glass 1999a), as has political participation (Blakely and Kennedy and Kawachi 2001). Several studies have considered greater mistrust to be indicative of lower levels of social capital (Kawachi et al. 1997; Kawachi and Kennedy and Glass 1999a; Subramanian and Kawachi and Kennedy 2001). Mistrust is generally defined as the percent of persons in an area who agree with the second part of the following question: "Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?"

A related indicator is perceived lack of fairness, indexed by the percent of persons who agree that "most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance" (Kawachi et al. 1997). Perceived helpfulness/reciprocity has also been used as a gauge of social capital, based on answers to the question, "Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful, or are they mostly looking out for themselves?" (Kawachi et al. 1997). It has also been hypothesized that crime level is an indicator of collective well–being that is influenced by cohesiveness in social relations or social capital (Sampson and Raudenbush and Earls 1997; Kawachi and Kennedy and Wilkinson 1999b).

Within the psychosocial dimension, we include theorized aspects of social capital such as civic engagement via political participation, membership in voluntary organizations and unions, and charitable giving. Crime as a marker for social cohesion is assessed through expenditures on jails and incarceration rates. Collecting information on lawsuits and the presence and use of protective services was also suggested as an indicator of the level of trust in communities.

This table presents the components and indicators of the psychosocial dimension. Seven psychosocial components are identified:

1. Political
2. Volunteer Organizations
3. Union Participation
4. Charitable Giving
5. Jails
6. Lawsuits
7. Protective Services

Within each component, several indicators are identified, and for each indicator at least one data set is listed.

 
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Date last reviewed: 08/11/2006
Content source: Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion