Neighbourhood Perceptions and Sense of Coherence in Adolescence

The neighbourhood has traditionally been neglected in studies about adolescents’ sense of coherence (SOC). The current study represents the first attempt to analyse the associations between neighbourhood assets, neighbourhood risks, and SOC during adolescence. The sample consisted of 7,580 Spanish adolescents aged 13–18 who were selected for the 2009/10 edition of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey in Spain. The adolescents completed self-report questionnaires that included the SOC-29 scale and separate HBSC scales measuring neighbourhood risks and assets. The results showed that neighbourhood risks were negatively associated with the adolescents’ SOC. In contrast, neighbourhood assets, especially relationships with significant adults, were positively associated with the adolescents’ SOC. Assets explained 6.5 % of the variability in SOC scores after controlling for risks, suggesting that assets may play a significant role, even in neighbourhoods where risks are present. We discuss implications and future research directions.Ministerio de Educación AP2009-097

Challenges, Opportunities, and Coping in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Jewish Communities around the World

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which lasted more than two years and included several waves, the present study focused on Jewish communities around the world, in order to understand the role of community during the pandemic. This study focused on the community mechanisms that helped community members to cope with the pandemic. To that end, between October 2021 and July 2022, in-person interviews were conducted with leaders and members of the following communities: Budapest, Hungary; Subotica, Serbia; Vienna, Austria; Bratislava, Slovakia; Vilna, Lithuania; Buenos Aires, Rosario, Salta, and Ushuaia in Argentina; and Mexico City and Cancun in Mexico. Each interview lasted between 45 min and 1.5 h. All of the interviews were audio-recorded and transcripts of those recordings were prepared. Three major themes emerged from the interviews: challenges, coping, and opportunities. Most of these themes were common to the different communities around the world. The findings of this work are discussed in terms of the concept of sense of community and resiliency theories

Salutogenesis and Coping: Ways to Overcome Stress and Conflict

This Special Issue aims to explore the concepts of stress, coping resources, and coping strategies, which are rooted in several theories, such as the stress and coping theory and the salutogenesis theory, and to understand how their core constructs are manifested in various ethnic and cultural groups around the world. This Special Issue includes 13 articles on salutogenesis and coping from different disciplinary, socio-cultural, historical, political, and economic perspectives. These articles address salutogenesis on the individual, organizational, and societal levels. The empirical studies are based in different societal and national contexts and refer to different ethnic groups within those contexts. Other studies examine international leaders in industry from a global perspective and present a systemic review of the literature concerning individuals in specific professions, such as nursing. The studies in the current Special Issue set the ground for continuing research toward even more comprehensive theoretical grounds; studies that incorporate several theoretical backgrounds and explore a broad theoretical model that may help us to understand successful adaptation in various contexts. In summary, results of studies that incorporate these theories may promote our understanding of the effects of coping resources and strategies, including acculturation strategies used among minority groups for positive adaptation

Youth in the midst of escalated political violence: sense of coherence and hope among Jewish and Bedouin Arab adolescents

Abstract Background During stressful events, individuals (particularly adolescents) from minority groups are often more vulnerable to distress. This claim will be examined in terms of coping resources and stress reactions to escalated political violence. This study aimed to compare coping resources and stress reactions among adolescents from two ethnic groups in southern Israel—Jews and Bedouin Arabs—during a period of escalated political violence (November 2012). The Bedouin Arab group is the ethnic minority of the sample and thus may be more at risk compared to the Jewish group. Methods Data were gathered from 78 Jews and 91 Bedouin Arabs (14–18 years old) by using convenience sampling method. Adolescents were contacted via the Internet or in person by the research team and they completed self-report questionnaires including the Sense Of Coherence Scale (SOC), Hope Index, State Anxiety Inventory, and State Anger Inventory. After a preliminary χ2 analysis of the sample characteristics, three main sets of analyses were conducted including a two-way MANOVA, zero-order correlations between study variables, and hierarchical multiple regressions. Results Bedouin Arab adolescents reported lower levels of SOC (F(1, 158) = 3.88, p = 0.04) and higher levels of individual and collective hope (F(1, 158) = 3.94, p = 0.03; F(1, 158) = 17.41, p = 0.001, respectively), as compared to Jewish adolescents. The Bedouin adolescents also reported higher levels of state anger (F(1, 158) = 5.58, p = 0.02). We identified cultural similarities related to the predictive power of coping resources (SOC and individual hope) in explaining state anger (β = −0.29, p = 0.001; β = −0.18, p = 0.045, respectively). However, cultural differences were found to affect the ability of SOC to predict state anxiety; SOC contributed significantly to state anxiety only among the Jewish adolescents (β = −0.45, p < 0.001). Conclusion These results emphasize the significance of addressing cultural/ethnic factors in attempts to understand mental-health issues among youth during periods of escalated political violence

Shifts in Traditional Methods of Coping Among Elderly Bedouin Men

Elderly Bedouin men in southern Israel are a unique traditional population living in remote unrecognized villages and experiencing rapid social transition, in addition to deep poverty and political tension. In this study, we aimed to explore stressful events, as self-defined by the participants, and the ways in which these men have coped with those stressful events. This study involved 12 men, aged 69&#8315;74, who participated in in-depth narrative interviews during which they were asked about transformative stressful events in their lives and how they had managed, understood, and utilized human capital, meaning-making, and other methods of coping. Analysis of the interviews revealed several themes: (a) the definition of stressful events within the cultural context, (b) the use of human capital to overcome those events, (c) the transformation of experience from hindsight into a didactic narrative that can be used to assign meaning to past events, which can then be passed on to the next generation, and (d) cultural transition as a catalyst for the creation of new understandings of events. This paper sheds new light on how elderly indigenous Bedouin men self-define stressful situations within a complex and unstable cultural context. This specific context, can help us to gain insight into how indigenous impoverished older men in similar contexts may self-define their stress and coping, based on the types of generalization accepted in qualitative research. The methodological contribution of this work lies in its use of narrative to culturally contextualize phenomenological meaning structures. Its theoretical contribution lies in its examination of the concept of stress within a specific cultural context

PARENTS’ DIGITAL COPING RESOURCES WITH ONGOING POLITICAL CONFLICTS

Mobile technologies such as the instant messaging application WhatsApp have become significant resources for information and social support in times of crisis, as well as for crisis communication. In times of crisis, these applications afford the exchange of real-time information and can influence users' coping behaviors. Conversely, they have also been reported to constitute a potential source of misinformation and increased exposure to emotional distress. To date, the role WhatsApp groups play for individuals, families, and communities living in regions affected by ongoing conflicts has yet to be investigated. This research draws upon the salutogenic and ecological theories to examine parents' digital coping processes with political violence in southern Israel. To this end, the study examines the types of coping resources provided in local online parent groups (OPGs) during violence escalation and relative calm periods. The study involves a mixed-methods approach comprising qualitative in-depth interviews with 15 couples who are parents of children under the age of 17 residing in communities near the Israel-Gaza border and an online ethnography of four local OPGs. Study findings reveal three levels of parents' coping resources on OPGs: personal, family, and communal digital coping resources. In addition, four WhatsApp affordances immediacy, reachability, mobility, and multimediality—contributed to WhatsApp's role as a shared and ubiquitous coping resource. This study expands the original models and core concepts of the salutogenic and ecological paradigms traditionally studied solely in offline environments and examines the effectiveness of digital contexts in helping parents cope with an ongoing collective stressor

Women in Refugee Camps: Which Coping Resources Help Them to Adapt?

The present study aimed to explore the coping resources and mental health of women who have fled Syria to a neighboring European country. To that end, we examined the roles of sociodemographic factors, situational factors, and personal and community sense of coherence (SOC and ComSOC, respectively) in mental-health outcomes. One hundred and eleven refugee women aged 19&ndash;70 filled out self-reported questionnaires during August 2018 in a refugee camp in Greece. The questionnaires asked the participants for demographic information (i.e., age, level of education level, and time spent in the camp) and also addressed the situational factors of having received aid from various organizations, appraisal of danger during the war in Syria, and exposure to war experiences, as well as the coping resources of SOC and ComSOC. The results show that time spent in the camp, appraisal of danger, SOC, and ComSOC all play significant roles in predicting the variance of various mental-health outcomes. Together, those factors predict 56% of anxiety, 53% of depression, and 58% of somatization. SOC was also found to mediate the relationships between time spent in the camp and outcome variables, as well as the relationships between the appraisal of danger and the outcome variables. This indicates that SOC is crucial for good adaptation. These results will be discussed in light of the salutogenic theory

Diversity Climate, Salutogenic Theory, and the Occupational Health of College-Educated Women from Conservative Communities

Over the past four decades, there have been significant changes in workplaces around the world, including a workforce that has become more diverse as the relative proportion of women in the workforce has increased. This trend has included the increased workforce participation of women from conservative minority groups. This article discusses the significance of the integration of college-educated women from conservative minority groups into the workforce in terms of their own personal health and well-being. This work focuses on two groups of college-educated women from conservative minority groups that have joined the Israeli workforce: Ultra-Orthodox women and Bedouin Arab women. This qualitative study was based on five focus groups, which included 16 women from the two examined groups. The main themes raised in those focus groups were categorized and analyzed. The data analysis was guided by the diversity-climate approach and salutogenic theory. The research findings indicate that a diversity climate that included most of the different aspects of this approach was present in the participants&rsquo; statements regarding their workplaces. In practice, diversity climate supported sense of coherence, such that both diversity climate and a sense of coherence led directly to the occupational health of these college-educated, minority women

Analysis of the Differential Relationship between the Perception of One’s Life and Coping Resources among Three Generations of Bedouin Women

Bedouin society has undergone rapid changes over the past decade. The younger generation of Bedouin women is better educated, which has enabled them to enter different professions, increased their incomes and elevated their social status. We examined the sense of coherence (SOC) and its components of meaningfulness, manageability and comprehensibility as well as the use of coping strategies among Bedouin women from three age groups. We also investigated the coping resources and strategies before determining the relationships between these variables in the three groups. One hundred ninety-six women participated in the study. Differences were found mostly between the oldest age group (61 years and older) and the two younger groups (21&ndash;40 and 41&ndash;60 years old). The oldest women reported less meaningfulness and used less positive reframing, planning, humor and acceptance. In terms of coping strategies, venting was used more by the youngest group whereas behavioral disengagement was used more by the oldest group. In the younger groups, SOC and its components were positively correlated with the use of coping strategies that are considered to be adaptive and with emotional support. However, the correlations between these factors were negative among the oldest group, which points to non-adaptive coping strategies used by these women. These results are discussed in light of the salutogenic, stress-appraisal and coping theories