Operationalisation of a demand/resource model of health: an explorative study.

Exchange processes between people and their environment are assumed to be essential for health. Mussmann et al define health as follows: “Health is a transactionally produced condition of a dynamic balance between the individual, his/her autonomous potential of self-organisation as well as of self-restoration and his/her social and economic environment. This balance depends upon the availability and use of health-protective and health-restoring factors in the individual and in the environment that can be defined as internal and external resources” (page 9). These resources are essential in coping with strain. Antonovsky suggested a salutogenic model that tries to answer the question how people can stay healthy despite the universal presence of stressors and demands. Antonovsky considers a general orientation guiding health related actions, called sense of coherence (SOC), as a necessary condition for positive health. He believes that in the SOC he found a personal/ internal resource allowing people to cope with the most diVerent forms of strain and nevertheless stay healthy. Therefore, Antonovsky’s SOC represents a major element of our framework, beside social, demographic and economic factors, health behaviour, internal and external resources. The aim of this study was to analyse the associations between self reported ill health and subjectively perceived external resources, internal resources—the SOC in particular—as well as health behaviour, controlling for socioeconomic variables such as age, sex, and educational level.