Sense of coherence and psychological well-being: improvement with age

Abstract

Males showed a stronger SOC and more well-being than females. Moreover, SOC and well-being increased with age in both sexes. Our findings suggest that SOC may develop over a entire lifetime.

The Salutogenic Model: The Role of Generalized Resistance Resources

“…Antonovsky (1987) hypothesized that SOC develops during childhood and stabilizes during the early adulthood stage. In contrast, other research proposed SOCs changes over an entire lifetime (e.g., Nilsson, Holmgren, Stegmayr, & Westman, 2003;Nilsson, Leppert, Simonsson, & Starrin, 2010). These findings raise several important issues regarding the longitudinal fluctuations as well as stability versus flexibility in individual SOC across the different development phases.…”

Older People, Sense of Coherence and Community

“…The SOC seems to be relatively stable over time, but not as stable as initially assumed (Eriksson & Lindström, 2011). Research findings show that the SOC develops over the entire lifespan, in other words it increases with age (Feldt et al, 2007(Feldt et al, , 2011Nilsson, Leppert, Simonsson, & Starrin, 2010). In the HeSSup study among 18.525 Finns, the SOC seemed to increase with age in terms of being more stable among subjects aged 30 and over (stability coefficient 0.81) than among younger adults (0.70) (Feldt et al, 2007).…”

“…A class of strong SOC with a decreasing trend and that of low SOC with an increasing trend was also found. Nilsson et al (2010) were able to demonstrate on a sample of Swedes, aged 18-85 years (n ¼ 43.598), that SOC increases with age in both men and women.…”

Public Health Citizen Science; Perceived Impacts on Citizen Scientists: A Case Study in a Low-Income Neighbourhood in the Netherlands

“…SOC may increase over the life span, and focused interventions may support this. Therefore, SOC is a key concept in asset approaches in health promotion (Eriksson and Lindström 2005, Nilsson et al 2010, Super et al 2014. The SOC-13 scale has been translated and applied in different parts of the world with different groups; a worldwide review looking into the validity of the scale suggests that it is interculturally stable (Eriksson and Lindström 2005) The SOC scale copyright holders granted permission for its use in this study.…”