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Gender and the subjective meaning of health: An integrated approach

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Abstract

Gender differences in the subjective meaning of HEALTH were investigated by means of free word association technique on a sample of 916, 8th, 10th, and 12fth grade rural and urban male and female high school students. Free associations to word HEALTH were classified into 11 previously determined categories. Each category data were analysed by hierarchical loglinear method of statistical analysis. None of the main effect was found statistically significant in any of the 11 analyses but the Gender by Area, and Gender by Area by Grade interactions were highly significant in all the 11 analyses. It was concluded that gender differences occur in the context of complex social and cultural environments and should be investigated integrated with other salient factors. Gender differences studied alone ignoring the other confounding factors may lead to misleading conclusions.

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Ahlawat, K.S., Subbarini, M. Gender and the subjective meaning of health: An integrated approach. Qual Quant 22, 151–165 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00223039

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