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。事实一再表明，残疾人参与非正式社会交往的机会较为有限，因此，他们面临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态度，使人们从“个人经历”的角度看待残疾，这种“个人经历”是个人因素和社会因素相互作用的结果。到目前为止，还没有对患有不同类型残疾的人所经历的社会孤立程度进行比较研究。该项目旨在填补这一空白，检查那些由于其特定缺陷与社会/环境结构相互作用的方式而最有可能被社会孤立的人的特征。本研究的另一个目的是比较不同残疾人群社会隔离的中介者和调节者模式，并探讨这些模式是否在整个生命过程中发生变化。方法：运用ICF残疾模型的理论框架，对生命机会调查进行二次数据分析（第1、2、3波）：-构建一个衡量社会孤立/社会联系的标准;-创建一个由其根本原因定义的社会孤立类型学; ─探讨最容易被社会孤立的人士的特征; ─比较残疾人士与非残疾人士被社会孤立的普遍程度和性质; ─探讨社会孤立的程度如何随时间而改变，以及导致这种改变的主要风险/保护因素是什么;- 检查是否有任何特定模式的个人/环境风险/保护因素，重叠在障碍。

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.