Prevalence and patterns of social isolation across the life-course in populations living with impairment

社会联系或社会资本对人们的心理和身体福利至关重要。事实一直表明，残疾人获得非正式社会互动的机会更加有限，因此，他们面临着社会资本减少和社会孤立的风险。社会和政治话语的变化改变了社会对残疾认知的态度，这是由于个人和社会创造的因素相互作用而产生的“个人经验”。到目前为止，还没有对患有不同类型障碍的人经历的社会孤立程度进行比较研究。该项目旨在通过审查因其特定损害与社会/环境结构相互作用而处于社会孤立风险最大的人的特征来填补这一空白。这项拟议的研究还旨在比较残疾人群中社会隔离的调解人和调节者的模式，并探索这些模式是否会在一生中发生变化。方法：使用ICF残疾模型的理论框架，我想对生活机会调查(第1、2、3波)进行二次数据分析：-构建社会隔离/社会联系的测量；-创建由其潜在原因定义的社会隔离类型；-探索那些最有可能面临社会隔离风险的人的特征；-比较残疾人和非残疾人经历的社会孤立的发生率和性质；-探索社会孤立程度如何随着时间的推移而变化，以及导致这种变化的关键风险/保护因素是什么；-检查是否存在任何特定的个人/环境风险/保护因素模式，这些因素在不同的损伤中重叠。

Social connectedness or social capital is of vital importance for people's psychological and physical welfare. It has been consistently shown that people living with impairments have a more limited access to informal social interactions and as a result they are at risk of decreased social capital and social isolation. Changes in the social and political discourse have shifted social attitudes towards a perception of disability in terms of 'personal experience' arising from the interactions of individual and socially created factors. Up to date, no comparative research has been conducted on the levels of social isolation experienced by people living with different types of impairments. This project aims to fill this gap by examining the characteristics of people who are most at risk of social isolation due to the way their specific impairment interacts with social/environmental structures. The proposed research also aims to compare the patterns of mediators and moderators underlying social isolation across groups of people with impairments and explore if these patterns change across the life-course.Methods:Using the theoretical framework of the ICF model of disability, I would like to conduct secondary data analysis on the Life Opportunities Survey (waves 1,2,3) to:- Construct a measure of social isolation/social connectedness;- Create a typology of social isolation defined by its underlying reasons;- Explore the characteristics of those who are most at risk of social isolation;- Compare the prevalence and nature of social isolation experienced by disabled people to that experienced by the non-disabled population;- Explore how the degree of social isolation changes over time, and what are the key risk/protective factors eliciting this change;- Examine if there are any specific patterns of personal/ environmental risk/protective factors that overlap across impairments.