Examines whether the positive association between social support and well-being is attributable more to an overall beneficial effect of support (main- or direct-effect model) or to a process of support protecting persons from potentially adverse effects of stressful events (buffering model). The review of studies is organized according to (1) whether a measure assesses support structure (the existence of relationships) or function (the extent to which one's interpersonal relationships provide particular resources) and (2) the degree of specificity (vs globality) of the scale. Special attention is given to methodological characteristics that are requisite for a fair comparison of the models. It is concluded that there is evidence consistent with both models. Evidence for the buffering model is found when the social support measure assesses the perceived availability of interpersonal resources that are responsive to the needs elicited by stressful events. Evidence for a main effect model is found when the support measure assesses a person's degree of integration in a large social network. Both conceptualizations of social support are correct in some respects, but each represents a different process through which social support may affect well-being. Implications for theories of social support processes and for the design of preventive interventions are discussed.

/pdf/stress-social-support-and-the-buffering-hypothesis-37b7abjbst.pdf

Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis.

Introduction 1. Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle 2. Images of Relationship 3. Concepts of Self and Morality 4. Crisis and Transition 5. Women's Rights and Women's Judgment 6. Visions of Maturity References Index of Study Participants General Index

In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982.

During the past 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in societal interest in preventing disability and death in the United States by changing individual behaviors linked to the risk of contracting chronic diseases. This renewed interest in health promotion and disease prevention has not been without its critics. Some critics have accused proponents of life-style interventions of promoting a victim-blaming ideology by neglecting the importance of social influences on health and disease. This article proposes an ecological model for health promotion which focuses attention on both individual and social environmental factors as targets for health promotion interventions. It addresses the importance of interventions directed at changing interpersonal, organizational, community, and public policy, factors which support and maintain unhealthy behaviors. The model assumes that appropriate changes in the social environment will produce changes in individuals, and that the support of individuals in the population is essential for implementing environmental changes.

An Ecological Perspective on Health Promotion Programs

Attachment--and loss.

Well-being : the foundations of hedonic psychology

Past research has shown that the emotional impact of undesirable life events is significantly greater among women than men. This finding has ted to speculation that women possess a deficit in coping capacity or in access to social support that renders them pervasively disadvantaged in responding emotionally to problematic situations. We present a different argument in this paper. We hypothesize and then document that women are not pervasively more vulnerable to the effects of undesirable events. A disaggregated analysis of life-event effects shows, further, that female vulnerability is largely conftned to "network" events: life events that do not occur to the focal respondent but to someone in his or her social network who is considered important. Further results are presented to argue that this greater vulnerability is due to the greater emotional involvement of women in the lives of those around them. It is demonstrated that this emotional cost of caring is responsible for a substantial part of the overall relationship between sex and distress. It is well documented that women in Western society have significantly higher rates of psychological distress than men (Al-Issa, 1982). In sociology, most discussions of this fact have revolved around the idea that women" s social roles are more stress provoking and less fulfilling than those occupied by men (Gove, 1978). This social-role explanation has fostered a substantial body of research on sex differences in chronic role-related stress. This work has typically been based on indirect measures of stress. Marital status, numbers and ages of children, and employment status have been used to make inferences about chronic stress (Gove, 1972; Radloff, 1975; Gove and Geerken, 1977; Aneshensel et al., 1981). For example, the sex-distress relationship has been shown to be more pronounced among the married than the previously married or never married (Gove, 1972; Fox, 1980). This specification has been interpreted as evidence that role-related stress and resources are responsi

Sex differences in vulnerability to undesirable life events.

Poor children experience greater psychological distress than do nonpoor children. However, evidence for the relationship between poverty and children's distress is limited by the use of measures of poverty at a single point in time, by a failure to examine race or ethnic differences, and by a lack of concern with explanations for poverty's effects. Using data from the 1986 Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) data set, we explored the relationships among current poverty, length of time spent in poverty, maternal parenting behaviors, and children's mental health. Persistent poverty significantly predicts children's internalizing symptoms above and beyond the effect of current poverty, whereas only current poverty predicts externalizing symptoms. Mother's weak emotional responsiveness and frequent use of physical punishment explain the effect of current poverty on mental health, but not the effect of persistent poverty. The relationships among poverty, parenting behaviors, and children's mental health do not vary by race/ethnicity. These findings support theoretical developments calling for greater emphasis on family processes in studies of children's poverty. They also argue for greater attention to trajectories of socioeconomic status in analyses of the effects of status on mental health.

Poverty, Parenting, and Children's Mental Health.

Previous research has documented consistently that persons holding low-socioeconomic status (SES) positions are more strongly affected emotionally by undesirable life events than are their higher-status counterparts. Two types of resources have been implicated in this differential vulnerability: financial resources and a broader class of coping resources, including social support and resilient personality characteristics. We present an analysis that disaggregates measure of life events and of SES to identify which events and which components of SES are most important for understanding differential vulnerability. We document that the lower-SES vulnerability persists across all types of personal events. In addition, we find that differential vulnerability is not confined to income but extends to education and occupational status as well. On the basis of these patterns, we conclude that differential vulnerability reflects more than a simple economic reality. Previous research offers speculative evidence that status differences in past and current social environments may explain differential vulnerability, especially through their effects on the socialization of resilient personality characteristics. We propose future research that could help to evaluate the validity of these speculations.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2137170.pdf

Socioeconomic status differences in vulnerability to undesirable life events.

Social support and mental health in community samples.

Do childhood emotional and behavioral problems diminish the probability of graduating from high school and attending college? If so, are their effects primarily attributable to the persistence of those problems over time, to continuities in social environments, or to the cumulative effects of early academic failures? We provide answers to these questions using data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth data set (1986-2000). Internalizing and externalizing problems at ages 6-8 significantly and strongly diminish the probability of receiving a high school degree. Among youth who receive a high school degree, externalizing problems also diminish the probability of subsequent college enrollment. In the case of high school degree receipt, the educational disadvantages associated with child emotional and behavioral problems result from the association of those problems with academic failures in middle and high school. In contrast, the association of childhood behavior problems with col...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3593032.pdf

Jane D. McLeod

Papers

Sex differences in vulnerability to undesirable life events.

Poverty, Parenting, and Children's Mental Health.

Socioeconomic status differences in vulnerability to undesirable life events.

Social support and mental health in community samples.

Childhood Emotional and Behavioral Problems and Educational Attainment