Financial Strain, Received Support, Anticipated Support, and Depressive Symptoms in the People’s Republic of China
Thoughts
Head empty
Annotations
krause1998 - p. 58
Chronic strains are defined as problems that are persistent and ongoing, whereas stressful life events refer to relatively short-lived difficulties that have a clear inception and endpoint (Pearlin, Lieberman, Menaghan, & Mullan, 1981)
krause1998 - p. 59
The loss of hope is a critical factor because it plays a central role in theories on the genesis of depressive disorders (Nunn, 1996).
krause1998 - p. 59
This is reflected in the following indicator that is often used to measure chronic financial strain: “How much difficulty do you have in meeting the monthly payments on your bills?” (Ilfeld, 1976; see also Turner, Wheaton, & Lloyd, 1995)
krause1998 - p. 61
quently, in her view, the family is likely to remain a source of
krause1998 - p. 61
All interviews were conducted in Mandarin Chinese in the homes of the study participants.
krause1998 - p. 61
Financial strain. Economic difficulty is assessed with three indicators that ask whether study participants have enough money to live on each month, whether they have sufficient spending money, and how their financial situation compares to that of other people their own age. A high score on this brief composite represents greater financial difficulty. The internal consistency reliability estimate for this scale is .733.
krause1998 - p. 61
Received economic support. As shown in Table I, four indicators are used to determine whether social network members help the respondent pay for his or her own housing (35% report receiving this kind of help), food (26% were helped in this way), clothing and other necessities (33% indicated that they received this kind of assistance), and medical expenses (76% received this type of help). A high score on these items denotes more received economic assistance. The reliability estimate for this brief scale is .914.
krause1998 - p. 62
Depressive symptoms. The dependent variable in this study, depressive symptomatology, is measured with six items that were taken from the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977). Previous work with these data suggest that it is best to create two separate subscales from these indicators that denote a depressed affect and somatic symptoms, respectively (Krause & Liang, 1993). A high score on either construct stands for greater psychological distress. The internal consistency reliability estimate for the depressed affect measure is .754, whereas Ihe corresponding estimate for the somatic symptom subscale is .670.
krause1998 - p. 64
aken together, the independent variables in the second step of the hierarchical regression analysis explain 21% of the variance in depressed affect scores.