MEASURING HEALTH: A REVIEW OF SUBJECTIVE HEALTH, WELL-BEING AND QUALITY OF LIFE MEASUREMENT SCALES (UK Higher Education Humanities & Social Sciences Health & So) by Bowling Ann

Author:Bowling, Ann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open University Press
Published: 2017-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

THE LUBBEN SOCIAL NETWORK SCALE (LSNS)

The LSNS was developed for use among elderly populations (Lubben 1985, 1988). It was a modification of the well-known Berkman-Syme Social Network Index, which successfully distinguished between survivors and non-survivors in their longitudinal general population survey in Alameda County (Berkman and Syme 1979). The LSNS attempted to take into account many of the criticisms levelled at existing social network measures. These included the need to measure more than household composition (as most older people live alone, this is an inadequate indicator of social isolation or need); the need to distinguish between social support and social networks (to facilitate attempts to distinguish between lack of available support and lack of need for support), and between family, friend and peer interactions and networks (given the literature on the superiority of friendship over family networks for psychological well-being); the need to measure network size, the existence of a confidant(e) relationship, and the existence of reciprocal relationships (given their theoretical importance for the timely provision of help and support when required, and their contribution to psychological well-being); the unwieldy nature of existing instruments (most were too long).

The original Berkman and Syme indicator consisted of a simple index based on four main components: marital status, nature of relationships with relatives and friends, church membership, and membership of other organizations and clubs. It was able to predict risk of mortality among members of their longitudinal survey. However, Lubben noted that there was little variation among samples of elderly people in relation to the indicators of organizational participation and marital status and therefore deleted these items. However, this decision needs revising in view of the increasing participation of the current generation of people aged 65 and over in community and voluntary activities and associations between marital status and health, well-being and mortality. Lubben also simplified the original scoring system.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.