Social capital, access to healthcare, and health-related quality of life in urban Ghana

ABSTRACTNo study based on the Resource Generator has explored the association between individual social capital and health-related quality of life among older adults. This study aims to evaluate the validity and reliability of the adapted Resource Generator-China, and examine the association between individual social capital measured by the Resource Generator-China and health-related quality of life of older rural-dwelling Chinese people. A field survey including 975 rural-dwelling people aged between 60 and 75 years was conducted in three counties of the Shandong Province of China in 2013. Quality of life was measured by the Chinese version of the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36): scores of Physical Component Summary and Mental Component Summary. Cumulative scale analyses were performed to analyse the homogeneity and reliability of the Resource Generator-China. We constructed generalised linear models by gender to examine the associations of social capital with health-related quality of life. Our findings suggest that the adapted instrument for older rural-dwelling Chinese people can be a reliable and valid measure of access to individual social capital. There were positive associations between individual social capital (total scores and sub-scale scores) and health-related quality of life. Individual social capital had a stronger association with mental health among women than men. Future studies should be improved through a longitudinal design with a larger and randomised sample covering large geographical rural areas in China.

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1012 Health related quality of life of mothers of children with cancer: The role of social support and social capital

European Journal of Cancer ◽

10.1016/s0959-8049(16)30438-5 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 51 ◽

pp. S149

Author(s):

C. Nicolaou ◽

C. Kouta ◽

E. Papathanasoglou ◽

N. Middleton

Keyword(s):

Quality Of Life ◽

Social Support ◽

Social Capital ◽

Health Related Quality ◽

Children With Cancer ◽

Related Quality ◽

Health Related

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Does it really matter where you live? A panel data multilevel analysis of Swedish municipality-level social capital on individual health-related quality of life

Health Economics Policy and Law ◽

10.1017/s174413310600301x ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 1 (3) ◽

pp. 209-235 ◽

Cited By ~ 37

Author(s):

M. Kamrul Islam ◽

Juan Merlo ◽

Ichiro Kawachi ◽

Martin Lindström ◽

Kristina Burström ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Quality Of Life ◽

Social Capital ◽

Health Status ◽

Panel Data ◽

Health State ◽

Health Related Quality ◽

Individual Health ◽

Related Quality ◽

Health Related

We test whether individual health status is related to area-level social capital measured by rates of voting participation in municipal political elections, controlling for personal characteristics, where health status is measured by mapping responses to interview survey questions into the generic health-related quality of life measure (HRQoL) the EQ-5D in order to derive the health state scores. The analysis is based on unbalanced panel data from Statistic Sweden's Survey of Living Conditions (the ULF survey) and a 3-level multilevel regression analysis, where level 1 consists of a total of 31,585 observations for 24,419 individuals at level 2 nested within 275 Swedish municipalities at level 3. We find that the health state scores increase significantly with municipality election rates. This result is robust to a number of measurement and specification issues explored in a sensitivity analysis. However, almost all variation in health status exists across individuals (more than 98%), which demonstrates that even if social capital (and other contextual variables) may be significant it is of less importance, at least at the municipality level in Sweden.

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Pediatric health-related quality of life and school social capital through network perspectives

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0242670 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 15 (12) ◽

pp. e0242670

Author(s):

Tomoya Hirota ◽

Michio Takahashi ◽

Masaki Adachi ◽

Kazuhiko Nakamura

Keyword(s):

Quality Of Life ◽

Social Capital ◽

Network Structure ◽

Population Sample ◽

Health Related Quality ◽

Pediatric Health ◽

Related Quality ◽

Health Related ◽

School Social Capital

Background Despite their importance in population health among children and adolescents, our understanding of how individual items mutually interact within and between pediatric health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and school social capital is limited. Methods We employed network analysis in a general population sample of 7759 children aged 9–15 years to explore the network structure of relations among pediatric HRQOL and school social capital items measured using validated scales. Furthermore, network centrality was examined to identify central items that had stronger and more direct connections with other items in the network than others. Network structure and overall strength of connectivity among items were compared between groups (by sex and age). Results Our analysis revealed that the item related to school/academic functioning and the item related to shared enjoyment among students had the highest strength centrality in the network of HRQOL and school social capital, respectively, underpinning their critical roles in pediatric HRQOL and school social capital. Additionally, the edge connecting “I trust my friends at school” and “trouble getting along with peers” had the strongest negative edge weight among ones connecting school social capital and pediatric HRQOL constructs. Network comparison test revealed stronger overall network connectivity in middle schoolers compared to elementary schoolers but no differences between male and female students. Conclusion The network approach elucidated the complex relationship of mutually influencing items within and between pediatric HRQOL and school social capital. Addressing central items may promote children’s perceived health and school social capital.

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