Rusinova N.L., Safronov V.V. Social Inequalities in Health and Personal Psychological Resources: a Comparative Study Project in Europe and Russia. Teleskop: Zhurnal Sociologicheskih i Marketingovyh Issledovanij, 2018, No. 1, pp. 21-29.

Abstract

The article presents a program of comparative sociological research in Europe and Russia of social differences in health due to the position of individuals in the social structure and their psychosocial resources, as well as the severity of such differences depending on the characteristics of the social context. In recent years, one of the important analytical areas of the study of social inequalities in health and the factors of their reduction, was associated with the study of personal psychological resources necessary for maintaining health.  Among them-the individual's inclination to an optimistic view of the future and high self-esteem, resistance to the difficulties of life and the ability to overcome them, finding meaning and purpose in what a person does in life, and involvement in such activity, independence in decision-making and the ability to control what is happening, confidence in their competence and success, as well as a feeling of vitality.  There are still few studies of this problem and they do not allow drawing firm conclusions about mediating and moderating effects of psychological resources on social inequalities in health.  And it remains unclear under what societal conditions these effects begin to manifest themselves. This study is intended to be carried out using empirical data from the European social survey (ESS), which covers the population of most European countries, including Russia, with representative surveys. These data contain the necessary information about health of the respondents (self-assessment of health, the presence of chronic diseases and depression scale), variables of their social status, and indicators of various psychological properties. Individual-level data will be supplemented by contextual information on the economy, the development of social state and culture of these countries collected by organizations such as World Bank, World Health Organization, Eurostat, as well as obtained from the aggregation of survey variables. The analysis of survey data and contextual information about the countries is carried out using statistical methods of hierarchical two-level modeling.