Abstract
BackgroundA great number of studies have concentrated on the influence of socioeconomic status with health outcomes, but little on how socioeconomic status affects social relationship in adolescents’ families, peers and schools. This study aimed to clarify more detailed information on the connection between social relationships and different dimensions of socioeconomic status.MethodsA school-based cross-sectional study was performed by 13–18 adolescents enrolled in East China from September, 2018 to May, 2019, which recruited 6902 students from junior and senior high schools and used the stratified random sampling method. Parent-child relationship (cohesion, expressiveness, conflict), peer relationship (interpersonal relationship, communication and interaction, social emotion) and student-teacher relationship (intimacy, support, satisfaction, conflict) were investigated. Besides, objective socioeconomic status (parental education and occupation, assessed by the adolescent) and subjective socioeconomic status (self-evaluation of family social class) were measured. More detailed information was used to clarify the link between social relationships and different dimensions of socioeconomic status.ResultsAll five indicators of socioeconomic status were slightly positively correlated with the quality of social relationships (r ranged from 0.036 to 0.189, all p < 0.001), except that maternal education was not correlated with the conflict dimension of parent-child relationship. Standardized regression coefficients indicated that paternal education (β = 0.08) and occupation (β = 0.07) were the predictors of parent-child relationship. And peer relationship model revealed that the corresponding effect size was slightly stronger for subjective socioeconomic status (β = 0.10), whereas the maternal education had a slightly stronger correlation with student-teacher relationship (β = 0.07) relative to other indicators.ConclusionsAdolescents with lower socioeconomic status had poorer social relationships compared to those with higher socioeconomic status. These findings have important public health implications for health policy makers to make sound decisions on resources allocation and services planning in improving adolescents’ social relationships and promoting health outcomes.
Highlights
A great number of studies have concentrated on the influence of socioeconomic status with health outcomes, but little on how socioeconomic status affects social relationship in adolescents’ families, peers and schools
Some researchers demonstrate that subjective Socioeconomic status (SES) is more accurate in capturing the more subtle aspects of social status, and providing more information than objective SES indicators, it has a greater impact on health [6]
The current study investigated the family, peer and student-teacher relationships of adolescents in East China to clarify more detailed information on the connection between these relationships with different dimensions of socioeconomic status
Summary
A great number of studies have concentrated on the influence of socioeconomic status with health outcomes, but little on how socioeconomic status affects social relationship in adolescents’ families, peers and schools. Many studies have suggested that education, income and occupation of objective SES indicators have profound impacts on everyone’s health [1, 2]. Subjective SES is called as subjective status, perceived social position [3], and subjective social status [4] It is defined as the faith of an individual about his or her position in the socioeconomic structure [5]. Some researchers demonstrate that subjective SES is more accurate in capturing the more subtle aspects of social status, and providing more information than objective SES indicators, it has a greater impact on health [6]. Some studies showed that there was an inverse gradient among SES, global health indicators, acute conditions, and health behaviors [11, 12]. Some results indicated that SES had no gradient among non-fatal injury, acute illness, mental health, and self-rated health [13, 14]
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