Opportunities to be and remain healthy are unequally distributed across socioeconomic groups and emerge and widen throughout childhood and adolescence. This thesis seeks to answer if social relationships are one of the mechanisms that operate in the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and health among Swedish adolescents, using the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) survey round 2009/10. It also aims to clarify which aspect of social relationships – its structure or function - matters more for health. Network structure includes its size and frequency of contact, and network function refers to resources received from those in the network, such as social support. The research questions guiding the thesis are: (1) Is higher socioeconomic status associated with higher self-rated health and wellbeing among Swedish adolescents? (2) Does the structure and the function of the child’s social relationships mediate in the associations in question 1? (3) Which aspect of social relationships (structure or function) mediates the associations in question 1 to the largest extent? Research questions are addressed by a mediation analysis using regression models to explore which indicators of social relationships mediate the associations between SES and health and wellbeing. Results showed a positive association between SES and health and wellbeing, and mainly three significant mediators were found which indicated that children with higher SES receive higher social support from their parents and peers and have a larger network which in turn lead to better health and wellbeing. Finally, results indicated that it is the function of social relationships rather than the structure that mediates to the largest extent.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-207145 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Asplund, Melinda |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Sociologiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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