IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v63y2006i6p1602-1613.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How does social comparison within a self-help group influence adjustment to chronic illness? A longitudinal study

Author

Listed:
  • Dibb, Bridget
  • Yardley, Lucy

Abstract

Despite the growing popularity of self-help groups for people with chronic illness, there has been surprisingly little research into how these may support adjustment to illness. This study investigated the role that social comparison, occurring within a self-help group, may play in adjustment to chronic illness. A model of adjustment based on control process theory and response shift theory was tested to determine whether social comparisons predicted adjustment after controlling for the catalyst for adjustment (disease severity) and antecedents (demographic and psychological factors). A sample of 301 people with Ménière's disease who were members of the Ménière's Society UK completed questionnaires at baseline and 10-month follow-up assessing adjustment, defined for this study as functional and goal-oriented quality of life. At baseline, they also completed measures of the predictor variables i.e. the antecedents (age, sex, living circumstances, duration of self-help group membership, self-esteem, optimism and perceived control over illness), the catalyst (severity of vertigo, tinnitus, hearing loss and fullness in the ear) and mechanisms of social comparison within the self-help group. The social comparison variables included the extent to which self-help group resources were used, and whether reading about other members' experiences induced positive or negative feelings. Cross-sectional results showed that positive social comparison was indeed associated with better adjustment after controlling for all the other baseline variables, while negative social comparison was associated with worse adjustment. However, greater levels of social comparison at baseline were associated with a deteriorating quality of life over the 10-month follow-up period. Alternative explanations for these findings are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Dibb, Bridget & Yardley, Lucy, 2006. "How does social comparison within a self-help group influence adjustment to chronic illness? A longitudinal study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(6), pages 1602-1613, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:63:y:2006:i:6:p:1602-1613
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(06)00174-2
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carver, Charles S. & Scheier, Michael F., 2000. "Scaling back goals and recalibration of the affect system are processes in normal adaptive self-regulation: understanding 'response shift' phenomena," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 50(12), pages 1715-1722, June.
    2. Gibbons, F. X., 1999. "Social comparison as a mediator of response shift," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 48(11), pages 1517-1530, June.
    3. Sprangers, Mirjam A. G. & Schwartz, Carolyn E., 1999. "Integrating response shift into health-related quality of life research: a theoretical model," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 48(11), pages 1507-1515, June.
    4. Steffen, Vibeke, 1997. "Life stories and shared experience," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 99-111, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sung Soo Lim, 2020. "The Effects of Chronic Illness on Aspirations and Subjective Wellbeing," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(5), pages 1771-1793, June.
    2. Nahum-Shani, Inbal & Bamberger, Peter A., 2011. "Explaining the variable effects of social support on work-based stressor-strain relations: The role of perceived pattern of support exchange," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 49-63, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Damschroder, Laura J. & Zikmund-Fisher, Brian J. & Ubel, Peter A., 2005. "The impact of considering adaptation in health state valuation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 267-277, July.
    2. Kaiser, Caspar, 2022. "Using memories to assess the intrapersonal comparability of wellbeing reports," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 410-442.
    3. Peter A. Ubel & George Loewenstein & John Hershey & Jonathan Baron & Tara Mohr & David A. Asch & Christopher Jepson, 2001. "Do Nonpatients Underestimate the Quality of Life Associated with Chronic Health Conditions because of a Focusing Illusion?," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 21(3), pages 190-199, May.
    4. Katrin Boström & Gerd Ahlström & Helena Sunvisson, 2006. "Being the Next of Kin of an Adult Person With Muscular Dystrophy," Clinical Nursing Research, , vol. 15(2), pages 86-104, May.
    5. Valentina Piwowar & Felicitas Thiel, 2014. "Evaluating Response Shift in Training Evaluation," Evaluation Review, , vol. 38(5), pages 420-448, October.
    6. Sharpe, Louise & Curran, Leah, 2006. "Understanding the process of adjustment to illness," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(5), pages 1153-1166, March.
    7. Wim Groot, 2003. "Scale of reference bias and the evolution of health," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 4(3), pages 176-183, September.
    8. Maes, Kenneth C. & Hadley, Craig & Tesfaye, Fikru & Shifferaw, Selamawit, 2010. "Food insecurity and mental health: Surprising trends among community health volunteers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia during the 2008 food crisis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(9), pages 1450-1457, May.
    9. Winter, Laraine & Parker, Barbara, 2007. "Current health and preferences for life-prolonging treatments: An application of prospect theory to end-of-life decision making," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(8), pages 1695-1707, October.
    10. Mazanderani, Fadhila & Paparini, Sara, 2015. "The stories we tell: Qualitative research interviews, talking technologies and the ‘normalisation’ of life with HIV," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 66-73.
    11. Svenja M. Spuling & Oliver Huxhold & Susanne Wurm, 2017. "Predictors of Self-Rated Health: Does Education Play a Role Above and Beyond Age?," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 72(3), pages 415-424.
    12. Julie Yun Chen & Eric Yuk Fai Wan & Edmond Pui Hang Choi & Anca Ka Chun Chan & Karina Hiu Yen Chan & Joyce Pui Yan Tsang & Cindy Lo Kuen Lam, 2017. "The Health-Related Quality of Life of Chinese Patients on Hemodialysis and Peritoneal Dialysis," The Patient: Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, Springer;International Academy of Health Preference Research, vol. 10(6), pages 799-808, December.
    13. Markus Wettstein & Hans-Werner Wahl & Anna Schlomann, 2022. "The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Trajectories of Well-Being of Middle-Aged and older Adults: A Multidimensional and Multidirectional Perspective," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 23(7), pages 3577-3604, October.
    14. Joseph T. King Jr. & Joel Tsevat & Judith R. Lave & Mark S. Roberts, 2005. "Willingness to Pay for a Quality-Adjusted Life Year: Implications for Societal Health Care Resource Allocation," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 25(6), pages 667-677, November.
    15. Mohamed Boucekine & Laurent Boyer & Karine Baumstarck & Aurelie Millier & Badih Ghattas & Pascal Auquier & Mondher Toumi, 2015. "Exploring the Response Shift Effect on the Quality of Life of Patients with Schizophrenia," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 35(3), pages 388-397, April.
    16. de Hond, Anne & Bakx, Pieter & Versteegh, Matthijs, 2019. "Can time heal all wounds? An empirical assessment of adaptation to functional limitations in an older population," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 180-187.
    17. Chia-Huei Wu, 2009. "Enhancing quality of life by shifting importance perception among life domains," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 37-47, March.
    18. Fereshteh Ghahramani & Jingguo Wang, 2020. "Impact of Smartphones on Quality of Life: A Health Information Behavior Perspective," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 22(6), pages 1275-1290, December.
    19. Giorgio Eduardo Montanari & Marco Doretti & Maria Francesca Marino, 2022. "Model-based two-way clustering of second-level units in ordinal multilevel latent Markov models," Advances in Data Analysis and Classification, Springer;German Classification Society - Gesellschaft für Klassifikation (GfKl);Japanese Classification Society (JCS);Classification and Data Analysis Group of the Italian Statistical Society (CLADAG);International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS), vol. 16(2), pages 457-485, June.
    20. Astrid Wahl & Tone Rustøen & Berit Hanestad & Eva Gjengedal & Torbjørn Moum, 2005. "Self-Efficacy, Pulmonary Function, Perceived Health and Global Quality of Life of Cystic Fibrosis Patients," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 72(2), pages 239-261, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:63:y:2006:i:6:p:1602-1613. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.