Limitations and Directions for Future Research

Review Article

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

Co-authors:

Amiram D. Vinokur

Corresponding author:

Amiram D. Vinokur

Abstract:

Giving support may be an important component of interpersonal relationships that has considerable value to health and well-being. It may not be a coincidence that mortality and morbidity studies inad- vertently assess giving or manipulate giving (e.g., taking care of a plant; Rodin & Langer, 1977) to operationalize variables of interest such as receiving social support or locus of control. If giving, rather than receiving, promotes longevity, then interventions that are cur- rently designed to help people feel supported may need to be rede- signed so that the emphasis is on what people do to help others. The possibility that giving support accounts for some of the benefits of so- cial contact is a new question that awaits future research.

Keywords: Research Institutes, Academic Departments, Faculty Members, Postdoctoral Researchers, Graduate Students

Description:

Although the prospective, longitudinal design of this study is very strong, given the outcome of interest, alternative explanations for these findings remain viable. It may be, for example, that giving sup- port is a better measure of health than receiving support, or that indi- viduals who have the resources and motivation to give are also more robust than those who do not, or that an abundance of resources pro- motes longevity and makes it easier to give. However, the beneficial effects of giving support were observed after controlling for the effects of age, functional health, satisfaction with health, health behaviors, mental health, interviewer ratings of health, socioeconomic status, and vulnerability to stress. Moreover, two distinct types of giving—GESS and GISO—contributed simultaneously to longevity. This means that a third variable correlated with one measure of giving—such as ro- bustness of one’s health—would have been held constant in a model that simultaneously tested the effect of the other giving measure. Thus, it is unlikely that the same alternative explanation can account for both effects of giving support. Of course, given the correlational nature of the study design, the regression methods used to disentangle

References:

This study was supported in part by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (P30-MH38330) and the National Insti- tute for Aging (R01-AG15948-01A1). We would like to acknowledge Camille Wortman, Debra Carr, John Sonnega, Becky Utz, John Reich, and Michael Brown for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. We would also like to express our appreciation to Camille Wortman, James House, Ronald Kessler, and Jim Lepowski, the original investigators of the Changing Lives of Older Couples Study.

Novel Approaches in Cancer Study

Aims and Scope

Board Members

Article in Press

Research Text Publishers

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

Abstract:

Description:

References: