| 1. |
- Giordano, Giuseppe Nicola, et al.
(författare)
-
Age, period and cohort trends in drug abuse hospitalizations within the total Swedish population (1975-2010).
- 2014
-
Ingår i: Drug and Alcohol Dependence. - : Elsevier BV. - 1879-0046 .- 0376-8716. ; 134:Jan 1, s. 355-361
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The societal consequences of drug abuse (DA) are severe and well documented, the World Health Organization recommending tracking of population trends for effective policy responses in treatment of DA and delivery of health care services. However, to correctly identify possible sources of DA change, one must first disentangle three different time-related influences on the need for treatment due to DA: age effects, period effects and cohort effects.
|
|
| 2. |
- Giordano, Giuseppe Nicola, et al.
(författare)
-
Social capital and change in psychological health over time.
- 2011
-
Ingår i: Social Science and Medicine. - : Elsevier BV. - 1873-5347 .- 0277-9536. ; 72, s. 1219-1227
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The positive association between social capital and general health outcomes has been extensively researched over the past decade; however, studies investigating social capital and psychological health show less consistent results. Despite this, policy-makers worldwide still employ elements of social capital to promote and improve psychological health. This United Kingdom study investigates the association between changes in psychological health over time and three different individual-level proxies of social capital, measures of socio-economic status, social support and the confounders age and gender. All data are derived from the British Household Panel Survey data, with the same individuals (N = 7994) providing responses from 2000-2007. The data were split according to baseline psychological health status ('Good' or 'Poor' psychological health - the dependent variable). Using Generalised Estimating Equations, two separate models were built to investigate the association between changes from baseline psychological health over time and considered variables. An autoregressive working correlation structure was employed to derive the true influence of explanatory variables on psychological health outcomes over time. We found that generalised trust was the only social capital variable to maintain a positive and highly significant association with psychological health in multivariable models. All measures of socioeconomic status and social support were rendered insignificant, bar one. We therefore argue that the breakdown of the traditional family unit (and subsequent reduction in family capital investment), along with psychosocial pathways, demonstrate plausible mechanisms by which a decrease in generalised trust could lead to an increasing trend of worse psychological health in youth over successive birth cohorts. Policy makers, while providing welfare solutions in response to breakdown in traditional family structure, must also consider perverse incentives they provide. If perceived as a viable lifestyle choice, welfare provision could inadvertently promote further decline of trust, at even greater cost to society.
|
|
| 3. |
- Giordano, Giuseppe Nicola, et al.
(författare)
-
Social capital and health-Purely a question of context?
- 2011
-
Ingår i: Health and Place. - : Elsevier BV. - 1873-2054 .- 1353-8292. ; 17, s. 946-953
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Debate still surrounds which level of analysis (individual vs. contextual) is most appropriate to investigate the effects of social capital on health. Applying multilevel ecometric analyses to British Household Panel Survey data, we estimated fixed and random effects between five individual-, household- and small area-level social capital indicators and general health. We further compared the variance in health attributable to each level using intraclass correlations. Our results demonstrate that association between social capital and health depends on indicator type and level investigated, with one quarter of total individual-level health variance found at the household level. However, individual-level social capital variables and other health determinants appear to influence contextual-level variance the most.
|
|
| 4. |
- Giordano, Giuseppe Nicola, et al.
(författare)
-
Social capital and self-rated health – a study of temporal (causal) relationships
- 2012
-
Ingår i: Social Science and Medicine. - : Elsevier BV. - 1873-5347 .- 0277-9536. ; 75:2, s. 340-348
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite the vast amount of research over the past fifteen years, there is still lively debate surrounding the role of social capital on individual health outcomes. This seems to stem from a lack of consistency regarding the definition, measurement and plausible theories linking this contextual phenomenon to health. We have further identified a knowledge gap within this field - a distinct lack of research investigating temporal relationships between social capital and health outcomes. To remedy this shortfall, we use four waves of the British Household Panel Survey to follow the same individuals (N = 8114) between years 2000 and 2007. We investigate temporal relationships and association between our outcome variable self-rated health (SRH) and time-lagged explanatory variables, including three individual-level social capital proxies and other well-known health determinants. Our results suggest that levels of the social capital proxy ‘generalised trust’ at time point (t-1) are positively associated with SRH at subsequent time point (t), even after taking into consideration levels of other well-known health determinants (such as smoking status) at time point (t-1). That we investigate temporal relationships at four separate occasions over the seven year period lends considerable weight to our results and the argument that generalised trust is an independent predictor of individual health. However, lack of consensus across a variety of disciplines as to what generalised trust is believed to measure creates ambiguity when attempting to identify possible pathways from higher trust to better health.
|
|
| 5. |
- Giordano, Giuseppe Nicola
(författare)
-
Social Capital and Self-rated Health: testing association with longitudinal and multilevel methodologies
- 2012
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since Durkheim’s seminal work over a century ago, research has repeatedly shown that individuals with higher levels of social integration, social networks and social support have better health status. However, the recent introduction of a contextual phenomenon known as social capital to the field of public health has sparked lively debate as to how it may also influence the health of individuals, if at all. Though critics have raised several points of contention regarding reported association between social capital and health over recent years, one outstanding issue remains: the lack of empirical research focusing on causal relationships, due to paucity of adequate longitudinal social capital data. The overall aim of this thesis is to test association between different social capital proxies and self-rated health (SRH), alongside other well-known health determinants, using multilevel and longitudinal data, whilst employing a variety of study designs and methods. All data used in this thesis come from the United Kingdom’s British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) from years 2000, 03, 05, 07 and 08. The underlying premise of this body of work is to investigate temporal (causal) relationships between social capital and health. All four papers of this thesis demonstrate that generalised trust is the most robust of all social capital proxies tested, it maintaining a positive association with SRH over time. Furthermore, results from paper III imply that prior trust levels can predict future SRH, lending weight to the hypothesis that trust is an independent determinant of health. However, debate remains as to whether generalised trust solely captures social capital or other, more tangible aspects of social cohesion.
|
|
| 6. |
- Giordano, Giuseppe Nicola, et al.
(författare)
-
Socialt kapital och självrapporterad hälsa : en undersökning av samband med longitudinella analyser och flernivåanalyser
- 2012
-
Ingår i: Socialmedicinsk tidskrift. - 0037-833X. ; 89:4-5, s. 367-377
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sedan 1990-talet har sambanden mellan socialt kapital i form av sociala nätverk, reciprocitet och generaliserad tillit och hälsa studerats internationellt. De flesta studier har dock varit tvärsnittsstudier, vilket försvårar undersökning av orsakssamband. De sociala kontexter som undersökts i flernivåanalyser har ofta varit geografiska områden. Nästan inga studier har använt familjedesign. British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) i Storbritannien består av paneldata från 2000, 2003, 2005, 2007 och 2008 i en vuxen befolkning samplad på hushåll. Resultaten visar att sociala nätverk, reciprocitet och tillit har samband med självrapporterad hälsa (SRH), men att sambanden är mest konsistenta för tillit. Tillit på hushållsnivå förklarar betydligt mer av variationen i SRH än område. Analys av gemensam miljö ("shared environment") minskar sambandet mellan tillit och SRH.
|
|
| 7. |
- Giordano, Giuseppe Nicola, et al.
(författare)
-
Testing the association between social capital and health over time: a family-based design.
- 2013
-
Ingår i: BMC Public Health. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1471-2458. ; 13:Jul,17
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The past decade has seen a vast increase in empirical research investigating associations between social capital and health outcomes. Literature reviews reveal 'generalized trust' and 'social participation' to be the most robust of the commonly used social capital proxies, both showing positive association with health outcomes. However, this association could be confounded by unmeasured factors, such as the shared environment. Currently, there is a distinct lack of social capital research that takes into account such residual confounding.
|
|
| 8. |
- Giordano, Giuseppe Nicola, et al.
(författare)
-
The impact of changes in different aspects of social capital and material conditions on self-rated health over time: A longitudinal cohort study.
- 2010
-
Ingår i: Social Science and Medicine. - : Elsevier BV. - 1873-5347 .- 0277-9536. ; 70, s. 700-710
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Individual aspects of social capital have been shown to have significant associations with health outcomes. However, research has seldom tested different elements of social capital simultaneously, whilst also adjusting for other well-known health determinants over time. This longitudinal individual-level study investigates how temporal changes in social capital, together with changes in material conditions and other health determinants affect associations with self-rated health over a six year period. We use data from the British Household Panel Survey, a randomly selected cohort which is considered representative of the United Kingdom's population, with the same individuals (N=9303) providing responses to identical questions in 1999 and 2005. Four measures of social capital were used: interpersonal trust, social participation, civic participation and informal social networks. Material conditions were measured by total income (both individual and weighted household income), net of taxation. Other health determinants included age, gender, smoking, marital status and social class. After the baseline sample was stratified by health status, associations were examined between changes in health status and changes in all other considered variables. Simultaneous adjustment revealed that inability to trust demonstrated a significant association with deteriorating self-rated health, whereas increased levels of social participation were significantly associated with improved health status over time. Low levels of household and individual income also demonstrated significant associations with deteriorating self-rated health. In conclusion, it seems that interpersonal trust and social participation, considered valid indicators of social capital, appear to be independent predictors of self-rated health, even after adjusting for other well-known health determinants. Understandably, how trust and social participation influence health outcomes may help resolve the debate surrounding the role of social capital within the field of public health.
|
|
| 9. |
- Giordano, Giuseppe Nicola, et al.
(författare)
-
The impact of social capital on changes in smoking behaviour: a longitudinal cohort study.
- 2011
-
Ingår i: European Journal of Public Health. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1101-1262 .- 1464-360X. ; jul 1, s. 347-354
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Smoking prevalence across high-income countries such as the United Kingdom has significantly decreased over the past few decades; this decrease, however, has not occurred uniformly across social strata. The highest concentrations of smokers are currently found in lower-income groups. Lack of access to material resources and differing social norms have been cited as possible causes of this imbalance in smoking behaviour. Social capital, measured by trust and levels of community participation, has also been postulated to influence health behaviour. Methods: Data from the British Household Panel Survey were used to identify smoking and non-smoking cohorts at baseline (N = 10 512); from these, individuals whose smoking behaviour had changed (the dependent variable) were identified. Measures of social capital, income, employment and marital status, and considered confounders were tested for associations with changes in smoking behaviour over a 2-year period. Both bivariate and multivariate models were utilized to elicit associations. Results: Only marital and employment status, along with social capital measures, remained significantly associated with changes in smoking behaviour. Individual/household income, baseline social class and general/psychological health failed to demonstrate any significant association with changes in smoking status. Conclusion: Support mechanisms (via marriage and employment) and elements social capital (measured by 'trust' and 'social participation') are independently and positively associated with smoking cessation; continual lack of active social participation and remaining single are associated with smoking initiation. Smoking interventions should consider increased participation as an intrinsic part of their design.
|
|
| 10. |
|
|
