Indicators Of Social Well-being Research Articles

Функционирование приемных семей и их социальное благополучие (по материалам социологического исследования в Еравнинском районе Республики Бурятия)

The research presents the results of a sociological study on foster families functioning and their social well-being indicators in Buryatia by a case study of one of the municipalities of the region. Nowadays, foster family is a priority form of life for orphans and children without parental care. It is relevant to study the problems of life and social well-being of foster families, because their solution allows one to find ways of improving their functioning in the modern context. The research examines the following issues: the completeness and availability of information on the process of placing a child in a family; problems at the initial stage of guardianship; the peculiarities of the child’s adaptation to the family; financial support of the foster family in the region; the educational capacity of foster parents and the target of the educational process; microclimate in the family as an indicator of psychological well-being.

МОДЕЛЬ СОЦИАЛЬНЫХ ФАКТОРОВ РИСКА СУИЦИДАЛЬНОГО ПОВЕДЕНИЯ МОЛОДЕЖИ АЛТАЙСКОГО КРАЯ

Официальные статистические показатели завершенных суицидов в той или иной территории России являются значимым индикатором комплексного неблагополучия жизнедеятельности населения. Следовательно, минимизация суицидального риска, формирование анти суицидальных барьеров будет оптимизировать экономическое, психологическое, моральное состояние социума в данном регионе.На современном этапе развития социологического дискурса происходит становление идей о системном анализе риска суицидального поведения населения всех возрастов, особенно молодежи, так как для всего мирового сообщества характерно такое явление, как реювенация аутоагрессии, на крайнем полюсе которого, находится суицид.В данной статье проанализированы результаты многолетнего мониторинга по оценке суицидального риска. Представлен регрессионный анализ полученных данных, как инструмент позволяющий оценить наиболее вероятные индикаторы, стимулирующие риск самоубийства молодого населения региона.Показано, что системным фактором суицидального риска является региональное уникальное сочетание неблагополучных социальных, экономических и поведенческих особенностей молодежи, которые стимулируют опасное рискованное поведение.

Identifying socio-ecological networks in rural-urban gradients: Diagnosis of a changing cultural landscape

Socio-ecological systems maintain reciprocal interactions between biophysical and socioeconomic structures. As a result of these interactions key essential services for society emerge. Urban expansion is a direct driver of land change and cause serious shifts in socio-ecological relationships and the associated lifestyles. The framework of rural-urban gradients has proved to be a powerful tool for ecological research about urban influences on ecosystems and on sociological issues related to social welfare. However, to date there has not been an attempt to achieve a classification of municipalities in rural-urban gradients based on socio-ecological interactions. In this paper, we developed a methodological approach that allows identifying and classifying a set of socio-ecological network configurations in the Region of Madrid, a highly dynamic cultural landscape considered one of the European hotspots in urban development. According to their socio-ecological links, the integrated model detects four groups of municipalities, ordered along a rural-urban gradient, characterized by their degree of biophysical and socioeconomic coupling and different indicators of landscape structure and social welfare. We propose the developed model as a useful tool to improve environmental management schemes and land planning from a socio-ecological perspective, especially in territories subject to intense urban transformations and loss of rurality.

MANDATAS AR DIKTATAS? ES FINANSŲ KRIZĖS VALDYMO PRIEMONIŲ LEGITIMUMO ANALIZĖ

Pagrindinis klausimas, į kurį siekiama atsakyti šiame straipsnyje, yra: ar ir kiek ES finansų krizės suvaldymas buvo (ne)legitimus? Analizei pa­sirinkta konkreti finansų krizės suvaldymo priemonė – finansinės paramos teikimas ES valstybėms. Straipsnyje analizuojamos septynios valstybės, kurios gavo finansinę paramą: Vengrija, Latvija, Rumunija, Airija, Ispanija, Portugalija ir Graikija. Tyrime iškeliamos dvi hipotezės: H(1): finansinės pa­ramos teikimo priemonė ES valstybėms narėms buvo nelegitimi todėl, kad ES piliečiai neturėjo įtakos priimant sprendimus; H(2): finansinės paramos teikimo priemonė ES valstybėms narėms buvo nelegitimi todėl, kad nedavė teigiamų rezultatų. Analizei pasirinktas Fritzo W. Scharpfo demokratinio le­gitimumo vertinimo teorinis modelis. Remiantis šiuo modeliu, nagrinėjamos dvi politinio proceso dalys: sprendimų įeigos ir išeigos. Atliktas tyrimas pa­ramos teikimo legitimumo įeigų dalyje leidžia patvirtinti hipotezę H(1) ir iš dalies paneigti hipotezę H(2).

Double digit economic growth vs. social wellbeing in Ethiopia: a cross-country comparison

Ethiopia has been reporting double digit economic growth rates over the last decade, while at the same time being ranked as one of the impoverished nations in the world. Despite the 11.0 percent average annual real GDP growth rate since 2004, the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative consistently ranks Ethiopia among the bottom three nations based on Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). In this paper, we investigate whether the reported economic growth has enhanced the wellbeing of the ordinary people. To address this objective, we employ three strategies. First, we divide the last two and half decades into pre- and post-2004 years, based on when Ethiopia has started registering double digit growth, to enable us conduct a pre- and postdouble digit growth analyses. Second, we select other three countries also ranked as the poorest countries based on MPI, and compare their performances vis-a-vis Ethiopia using selected social welfare and human development indicators drawn from the World Development Indicators. Third, we use Johansen cointegration and Granger causality tests to examine the impact of economic growth on these social wellbeing measures. Our results show that one, the significant jump in economic growth is not matched by most of the social wellbeing measures. Two, there is no or little significant difference, in terms of these measures, between Ethiopia and the other impoverished countries that reported much slower economic growth than Ethiopia. Three, based on Johansen cointegration and Granger causality tests, we find no significant impact of the reported economic growth on the selected social wellbeing measures. In other words, there is no evidence of economic growth enhancing social wellbeing in Ethiopia. Keywords: real Gross Domestic Product; real GDP; real GDP per capita; economic growth; social wellbeing; Granger causality; cointegration; Ethiopia; Multidimensional Poverty Index; MPI

Социальное самочувствие молодых работников промышленных предприятий: индикаторы и факторы


 Владислав Юрьевич Бочаров – к.соц.н., доцент кафедры социологии и культурологии Самарского национального исследовательского университета, ассоциированный научный сотрудник СИ РАН, Санкт-Петербург, Россия. Электронная почта: vlad.bocharov@gmail.com
 Юлия Владимировна Васькина – к.соц.н., доцент кафедры социологии и культурологии Самарского национального исследовательского университета, ассоциированный научный сотрудник СИ РАН, Санкт-Петербург, Россия. Электронная почта: vaskina18.05@gmail.com
 В статье рассматривается специфика индикаторов социального самочувствия, выделяемых исследователями в европейских и российских замерах. На основе сравнения понятий «социальное самочувствие» и «субъективное благополучие» выделяются общие для отечественных и зарубежных подходов индикаторы для их анализа: удовлетворенность жизнью в целом и уверенность в завтрашнем дне. Цель анализа – выявление факторов, определяющих социальное самочувствие. Прикладное значение такого знания – коррекция направлений социальной политики предприятий, которые влияют на самочувствие работников. Актуальность изменений связана с наблюдаемой на отечественных промышленных предприятиях устойчивой тенденции оттока кадров. В статье анализируется влияние на социальное самочувствие двух групп факторов: производственных (условия труда, заработная плата и т. д.) и внепроизводственных (жилищные условия). Важность этих факторов подтверждается с помощью корреляционного анализа данных массовых опросов среди молодых (до 30 лет) работников российских промышленных предприятий. Для такого анализа использованы данные социологических исследований, выполненных в режиме мониторинга по единой методологии в одном из российских регионов Поволжья в 2012–2014 гг. Для этой статьи с помощью программы SPSS из общих массивов ответов работников промышленности за 2012–2013 гг. были отобраны ответы молодых работников (2012 г. – N=242, 2013 г. – N=168), а также взяты данные опроса 2014 г. «молодых специалистов» (N=122). При опросе 2014 г. дополнительным критерием отбора респондентов (помимо возрастного) выступало среднее или высшее профессиональное образование по специальности или профессии, предполагающей трудоустройство в промышленности, поэтому они были названы в исследовании «молодые специалисты». Взаимосвязи между социальным самочувствием работников и разными факторами позволяют формировать менеджменту грамотную социальную политику на российских промышленных предприятиях. В представленной статье обосновывается необходимость гибкого подхода к выбору индикаторов социального самочувствия для различных социальных групп.

Social Desirability Bias in Child-Report Social Well-Being: Evaluation of the Children’s Social Desirability Short Scale Using Item Response Theory and Examination of Its Impact on Self-Report Family and Peer Relationships

Research on child well-being largely relies on children’s self-report data, potentially biased by social desirability (SD). In this study, we aim to (1) evaluate the psychometric properties of the Children’s Social Desirability Short (CSD-S) scale, and (2) examine if and, if so, how SD systematically biases child-report family and peer relationships as indicators of social well-being. In spring 2015, 843 elementary school children (aged 10) and their parents were surveyed on well-being indicators and SD measured with the 14-items Children’s Social Desirability Short (CSD-S) scale. The CSD-S was evaluated using nonparametric Item Response Theory (NIRT). Linear mixed-effects regression models based on multiple imputations of multilevel missing data were run to examine the role of SD in self-report social well-being in addition to socio-demographic characteristics, accounting for the nested structure of the data (students were sampled at class level). Applying NIRT, we identified a 13-items subset of the CSD-S with double monotonicity. Cronbach’s alpha was .82. When controlling for children’s socio-demographic characteristics, SD significantly positively predicted subjective evaluations of family relationships (B = 0.04, t(49272) = 7.45, p < .001), whereas it significantly negatively predicted self-report deviant behavior performed towards peers (B = −0.03, t(39927) = −14.40, p < .001) and experienced from peers (B= −.0.01, t(39028) = −2.86, p = .002). SD bias explained additional 22 percent of variance in self-report deviant behavior performed towards peers. Since SD impacts the validity of self-report well-being, child indicators research should include age-specific SD scales, e.g., the CSD-S, and control for the bias in statistical analyses.

The Social Impact of the Financial Crises in the Recent Past and Evidence Thereof — With Special Reference to India

Financial crises have significant short-term and long-term social costs. As a result, economic and social indicators have dwindled significantly since 2007. The soar in the unemployment rate has been most marked in so called advanced economies, reaching alarming levels in the tangential Europe with more than half of the young labour force unemployed in Greece and Spain. What is more, the crises, one global and another Euro zone financial crisis, have inexplicably hurt the poor. The progress in poverty alleviation has been not smooth across regions, and the pace has slowed since 2007 across the board. The crisis has also created challenges to the achievement of other development targets, including reduction of the occurrence of malnutrition and mortality rates, and civilizing gender equality in education and access to hygienic water and sanitation. This also suggests a significant loss or a reversal of the progress in development. In the above background, this paper presents evidence on the extent to which the global financial crisis and other crises since 2007 has been associated with deteriorating economic and social well-being indicators with a special focus on India. The results clearly indicate that poverty levels have been falling before the pre-crisis period but the post-crisis period witnessed a jump in the poverty rates across India.

Profound vision loss impairs psychological well-being in young and middle-aged individuals.

PurposeThe aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of profound vision loss on psychological well-being in adolescents, young adults, and middle-aged adults with regard to mood, interpersonal interactions, and career-related goals. In addition, we assessed the significance of the resources that may be used to enhance psychological well-being in cases of profound vision loss, and in particular, examined the utility of low vision aids and the role of the ophthalmologist as a provider of emotional support.MethodsA questionnaire was issued to individuals aged 13–65 years with profound vision loss resulting from Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON). Depression prevalence was evaluated with questions regarding major depressive disorder symptomatology. Participants appraised the effects of vision loss on their interpersonal interactions and career goals by providing an impact rating (IR) on a 21-point psychometric scale from −10 to +10. Social well-being index was defined as the average of interpersonal IR and career IR. Subjects were additionally asked about the use of low vision aids and sources of emotional support.ResultsA total of 103 participants (mean age =26.4±11.2 years at LHON diagnosis; mean ± standard deviation) completed the questionnaire. Nearly half (49.5%) met the depression criteria after vision loss. Negative impacts on interpersonal interactions (median IR = −5) and career goals (median IR = −6) were observed; both ratings were worse (P<0.001) for depressed versus nondepressed subjects. Older age at diagnosis corresponded to higher depression prevalence and increased incidence of negative interpersonal IR and career IR. Sixty-eight percent of subjects used electronic vision aids; controlling for age, social well-being index was higher among these individuals than for those who did not use electronic aids (P=0.03). Over half of the participants (52.4%) asserted that they derived emotional support from their ophthalmologist.ConclusionProfound vision loss in adolescents, young adults, and middle-aged adults is associated with significant negative psychological and psychosocial effects, which are influenced by age and use of electronic vision aids. Ophthalmologists, in addition to managing vision loss, may serve an important role in the emotional adaptation of these patients.

A Comparison of Syrian Migrant Students in Turkey and Germany: Entrepreneurial Tendencies and Career Expectations

&lt;p style="text-align:justify"&gt;Entrepreneurship has been an intriguing issue as an indicator of economic development and social welfare particularly being focused on last decades. Furthermore, the issue of immigration has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Nowadays, the quality of the workforce and it's training processes are not getting only progressively important but as well the participation of migrants in the labor market will be a great problem in the future. Migrant’s entrepreneurial tendencies and career expectations designation are the main objectives of this research. This research was designed as a comparative qualitative model, and the structured written interview technique was used in order to collect the data. Randomly sampling study groups were formed according to methods of maximum diversity. The sampling group was formed by the participation of 12 Syrian migrant high school students who live and get trained in Altindag, a district of Ankara, Turkey and 13 Syrian migrant high school students who live and get trained in Kreuzberg, a district of Berlin, Germany. The collected data were analyzed by content analysis technique. The results of the research reveal that immigrant students have a high level of entrepreneurship in Germany, the nonetheless low level of the expectations of future career prospects in Turkey. Thus, the absences of sociocultural and economic areas where they will use entrepreneurial tendencies are a serious obstacle to them. Moreover, participants argue that they do not want to stay in Turkey anymore, and most of them intend to emigrate to Europe or another country if they can do so. Unlike Germany, many of the participants in Turkey neither know what they want to be nor how they want to live in the future and nor have they made any career planning.&lt;/p&gt;

Social Indicators of Wellbeing

Can we measure and/or compare the potential wellbeing that world countries offer to their citizens ? Our positive answer follows 3 stages: identify the relevant issues for citizens, de- fine and compile practical indicators of these and finally aggregate everything into an index to derive a full country ranking. Our endeavor thus covers the long standing twin problems of indicators selection and index construction. We firstly borrow from psychology, philosophy and economics to identify wellbeing dimensions. We then refine these into a dozen facets by applying the transparent criteria of politics and urgency. Next, we address social aggregation and argue that the facets of wellbeing are not meant to be compared or ranked and should never be substituted one for another. This moral restriction forbids the traditional utilitarian averaging and leads us to endorse the Condorcet median as the most robust method to derive a consensual ranking while respecting non-comparability.

Основні чинники соціального самопочуття містян (регресійна модель за дефіцитними сферами)

Studying social well-being of people is an important indicator of society life; especially relevant in this case are special methods based on multidimensional approach. In this article, the author used the method of Integral Index of Social Well-Being (E. Golovakha, N. Panina). The empirical data of the research are the arrays of data of city monitoring «Social well-being of Lutsk citizens», conducted by the Laboratory of sociological researches of Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University in Lutsk in June 2016, and secondary data of analogical researches in 2014 and 2015.For separating the main factors of social well-being of Lutsk citizens, we built the qualitative regression models of social well-being for its lacking spheres and welfares (coefficient of determination – 52 % and 59 % accordingly). Considering the results of regression analysis, the most important in forming social well-being of citizens is the sphere of social security, then – socio-political sphere (0,307) and the least important – sphere of social relations (0,187). While specifying the regression model, we identified that such social welfares, as state protection from life level reduction, people able to lead the state, political ideals worth being supported – are statistically insignificant. While the most important are such social welfares as legal help in rights protection (0,294), fare appraisal of person’s merits (0,211), norms and values that unite people in the state and society (0,189), protection against crime (0,165).

Conceptualizing and measuring occupational social well-being: a validation study

PurposeThe current conceptualizations and measurements of well-being are inadequate in the context of work. Specifically, well-being research has neglected the social aspects of well-being. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the validity of a multi-dimensional view of occupational social well-being.Design/methodology/approachData were collected in an educational setting, i.e. six different schools in a Swedish municipality. A total of 314 teachers and other categories of school staff (239 females and 75 males) participated in a survey study.FindingsResults provided empirical support for a multi-dimensional view of occupational social well-being. The dimensions were integration, acceptance, contribution, actualization and coherence, and they were differentially correlated with previous measures of well-being. Furthermore, occupational social well-being accounted for additional variance in work tension, overall job satisfaction and organizational commitment over and above the variance accounted for by positive and negative affect and satisfaction with life, indicating the value of taking domain-specific social indicators of well-being into account in explaining various employee outcomes.Practical implicationsOccupational social well-being is an umbrella term for describing the well-lived social life in the context of work. As such, this is a crucial part of a holistic view of well-being at work. Thus, effective employee well-being enhancement programs should not only focus on physical and mental health promotion or competence development but must also include measures of relational experience and functioning as discussed in the present study.Originality/valueThis is the first study to measure and validate occupational social well-being as an attempt to complement existing measures of subjective and psychological well-being. Measures of social aspects of well-being are crucial to assess as it has been argued in previous research that context-free measures of well-being might render misleading results.

Социальное самочувствие и финансовая грамотность горожан (по итогам исследования "Волгоградский омнибус")

The article provides a brief overview of approaches to the issue of social well-being and shows the 2011–2016 trend data of social well-being of Volgograd Oblast’s urban population. The paper aims to study the aspects of interplay between social well-being and financial literacy of urban residents. To accomplish the identified goal the authors had to tackle the tasks as follows: clarification of the notions “social well-being” and “financial literacy”; analysis and selection of methods for the measurement of both social well-being and financial literacy; implementation of the sociological survey — “Volgograd Omnibus”; evaluation of social well-being among the diverse social groups that differ in the level of financial literacy. The research study included both theoretical methods (investigation, generalization, analysis, synthesis) and empirical ones (interrogation, collation). When it came to the analysis of the notions “social well-being” and “financial literacy”, emphasis was laid on certain subjective indicators that are of great value for the identification of the actual state of modern society. The sociological monitoring survey “Volgograd Omnibus” was conducted for the confirmation of the proposed hypothesis on the interplay between social well-being and financial literacy. The study subjects were residents of Volgograd and other towns of the region aged 16 and older. The data analysis testifies that negative assessments of social well-being have prevailed among the Volgograd Oblast’s population between 2011 and 2016. The 2014–2016 economic crisis has also aggravated the situation. Residents of Volgograd consider their financial literacy poor enough: half of the respondents designated their skills and knowledge as ‘satisfactory’ while a fifth part declared they had no financial literacy at all. To test the hypothesis a typology of social groups by levels of financial literacy self assessment was introduced. The analysis of social well-being indicators of the outlined groups has revealed a number of differences. Increase in the level of financial literacy is accompanied by 1) downward change in the index of interregional comparisons, 2) growth in the level of personal optimism (‘unadapted’ individuals give primarily negative assessments while ‘perfectly adapted’ ones, as a rule, have positive expectations), 3) growth in the index of purchasing power. The discovered differences in the indicators of social well-being among the social groups that give varying assessments of their financial literacy prompt the suggestion that there is actually some interplay between the considered phenomena. Further studies of the interplay between social well-being and financial literacy shall contribute to the efficiency improvement of financial literacy enhancement oriented arrangements.

Is GDP a Relevant Social Welfare Indicator? A Savers-Spenders Theory Approach

The use of GDP as the main index of progress and welfare of a country has been the subject of a long debate amongst economists. Using and extending the saversspenders theory recently popularized by Mankiw (2000, AER), we analyze the theoretical relationships between GDP and the welfare of a society. This analysis is undertaken using several different overlapping generations models which all take into account the great heterogeneity of consumer behavior observed in the data (different labor supply choices, different degrees of altruism and/or different degrees of impatience to consume). The results indicate that GDP (per capita) is often a relevant index and is always a decent social welfare indicator.

Longitudinal Analysis of Social Welfare Situation in Iran (1967–2010)

The last few decades have seen increased theoretical and empirical interest in multidimensional measures of social welfare. The objective of this paper is to introduce social welfare index (SWI) and its trend for Iran. In this mix method study, Delphi technique was conducted to evaluate expert opinion on choice of priority social welfare indicators (study variables) for Iran in 2013. Then, we have used OECD methodology of constructing composite indicators to develop SWI. SWI as well as its trend have been measured for 1967–2010 (sample size = 44 years). Data were obtained from the Central Bank of Iran, Statistical Center of Iran, and Social Security Organization of Iran. Data were analyzed using SPSS software ver. 20 and exploratory factor analysis, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO), and Bartlett test. Based on KMO (0.710), data was adequate for underlying analysis and result of Bartlett’s test of sphericity (757.75, df = 45, p < 0.001) imply that correlation matrix of variables was not an identity matrix. Furthermore, the first two factors explained 77.58 % of total variances, together. The results showed that SWI generally has been increasing during the study period. Furthermore, the best and worst performances were devoted to 1971 and 1988, respectively. Due to having more and diverse dimensions and indicators, SWI can help as a more realistic measure of social welfare.

ИНДЕКСЫ СОЦИАЛЬНОГО САМОЧУВСТВИЯ КАК ИНСТРУМЕНТ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ И ПРОГНОЗИРОВАНИЯ ЭТНОПОЛИТИЧЕСКИХ КОНФЛИКТОВ

The modern world is characterized by intensification of complex ethnopolitical conflicts which are mostly irrational, rough and lead to large numbers of casualties. They are also increasingly often used as geopolitical tools; in that, they undermine both national and international stability. It is therefore one of the key tasks of modern political science &ndash; not only to improve the level of theoretical and conceptual understanding of the nature of ethnicity and ethnic conflicts, but also to detect the weak points of national politics and to develop effective policy that would prevent such conflicts from emerging. To achieve this goal, researchers need to outline key factors of a conflict and to assess the value of each of them. Indices of social well-being have been gaining popularity among researchers lately, since they are applicable for cross-country and longitudinal studies, are useful for studying different aspects of social situations, and (last, but not the least) allow to draw a simplified picture of social processes, helping the decision-makers and public to comprehend them easier. However, indices of social well-being have a number of drawbacks as well. This article covers their history, classification, and both pros and cons of their application in research and forecasting of ethnopolitical conflicts. It is concluded that none of existing indices excel at this task; however, some of them are more valuable than others. The authors underline the fact that not all ethnic tensions result in ethnopolitical full-scale conflicts, outline key conditions under which such transition is possible, and comment on the methodology applicable for prediction of this transition.

POLÍTICA ECONÓMICA Y POLÍTICA SOCIAL EN MÉXICO: DESEQUILIBRIO Y SALDOS

Mexico's adoption of an open-economy model to reorient its economic policy precipitated disparate growth and internal wealth distribution, as the control of the macroeconomic environment led to lagging social welfare indicators and increased poverty and inequality. Although Mexican social policy has sought to compensate for the deteriorating living conditions of its population, the scope of this policy is insufficient, insofar as the economic policy in place imposes limits that divert public spending towards certain target groups, leaving a broad swath of the people vulnerable. The data demonstrates that this targeted social policy has proved unable to reverse the disparities derived from the type of economic policy in effect. If we do not correct the factors that govern the current model, we risk gradually undermining the living conditions of the population and even national security.

Municípios recém-criados no Vale do Jequitinhonha e promoção da cidadania: uma análise comparativa dos indicadores de bem-estar social

During the 1990s were created in Brazil over a thousand municipalities; in Minas Gerais the number was over a hundred, and the Vale do Jequitinhonha was twenty-four. This emancipation outbreak reflects the greater autonomy guaranteed by the Constitution of 1988 that allowed the states of federataion to legislate about the subject. Against the advantages and disadvantages of emancipation, it was observed that, starting from 1990s decade, the new municipalities created had greater progress in social welfare indicators than other categories. At the end of the analysis period (2000-2010), it was found that the synthetic indicators practically equalized, which shows to have been a reduction of social inequalities among municipalities in the Vale do Jequitinhonha. The social dimensions that contributed to the social development of the new municipalities were: culture, leisure, welfare and education.

Team identification and postdisaster social well-being: The mediating role of social support.

© 2015 American Psychological Association. This research confirms the relationship between team identification and social wellbeing in times of adversity, and demonstrates how the perception of 2 types of social support-instrumental and emotional support-mediates this relationship. Analysis of data from spectators attending Japanese professional soccer games in the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake identified a positive relationship between spectators' identification with a hometown team and postdisaster community cohesion, an indicator of social well-being. However, this relationship was partially mediated by the level of emotional support spectators perceived being provided by the team. In addition, perceptions of instrumental support from the team were unaffected by team identification, but positively predicted community cohesion. Our findings offer unique evidence for the ability of team identification to generate psychological benefits in the face of adversity, and advances the understanding of the mechanisms by which team identification leads to social well-being. This research further demonstrates that the mediating role of social support in the relationship between social identification and well-being may depend on the context of social identification under investigation as well as types of social support and well-being measured.