Social Epidemiology: Social and Environmental Causes Critique - Advantages and disadvantages table in University Psychology

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Created by: Psych951
Created on: 09-01-19 12:05

Social Epidemiology: Social and Environmental Causes Critique

Advantages

Research supports the idea that individual-based factors should be explored in their social context (Link & Phelan 1995)
Broad-based social interventions are effective
Many social factors are the root of disease and also access to health-determining resources are socially determined
Evidence supports the impact of environmental factors

Disadvantages

Particularly in Western society, the top causes of disease are lifestyle choices and so ultimately a more proximate tier should be investigated
Even the social contexts are personalised for each individual and so the degree tow which these social factors affect individuals will have great variance
Psychosocial factors mediate the effects of social structural factors - Many confounding variables and measurement incongruency (Martikainen et al 2002)

Evaluation

Investigating the social and environmental causes of health is important because they often provide a context for other factors, however an integrated approach should be adopted due to the undeniable influence of psychological and personal factors

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