Social capital has shown the potential to benefit health, and therefore is an important concept to take up within nursing. However, the lack of consensus about how social capital should be defined and measured leads to challenges translating existing evidence into health promotion practice. Further, there is some literature suggesting that social capital may not benefit the health of rural residents in the same way as it does for urban residents. Therefore, there is a need for research that helps advance our conceptual knowledge of social capital while examining the concept and its impact on health for rural residents. This thesis involved a sequential explanatory mixed methods study to understand how rural residents experience social capital and how it impacts their health. In the first phase, I began with an exploratory factor analysis of the 2013 General Social Survey data. This revealed the underlying factors that made up social capital for urban and rural residents of Ontario. Logistic regression analysis indicated that four of the six social capital factors were positively associated with health. There were no differences between rural and urban residents in the factors revealed, nor in the influence of the factors on health, however rural residents scored higher on several social capital factors. In the second phase, interviews and focus groups in two rural Ontario communities helped explain the findings and explored how rural residents experienced social capital in their daily lives. The friendly and helpful social context helped elucidate why rural residents had high social capital scores, yet the structural context contributed to difficulties accessing social capital for some groups. Together, the data from both study phases help advance our knowledge of social capital with important implications for nursing practice. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / There has been a lot of attention to the topic of social capital and how it may benefit health. Social capital means the resources someone has access to because of belonging to a social network. This thesis aimed to understand what makes up social capital, how it influences health, whether there are differences in its impact between urban and rural residents, and how people living in two rural communities experience it in their daily lives. Quantitative analysis showed that some components of social capital benefited physical and mental health while others did not. Rural residents were not impacted any differently by social capital, however they had higher scores on several of its components than urban residents. Interviews and focus groups helped explain how the friendly and helpful social context of the rural environment contributed to high social capital, yet structural challenges meant some community members had difficulty accessing its benefits.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/23820 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Buck-McFadyen, Ellen |
| Contributors | Valaitis, Ruta, Nursing |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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