Abstract
Qualitative in-person interviews with 114 olderAfrican Americans and whites with chronic illness wereconducted to assess whether they thought of themselvesas healthy or not healthy and the meanings associatedwith that assessment. The first and most frequentlyassigned attribute of healthy was the presence offunctional capacities; for not healthy it was thepresence of medical conditions or physical symptoms. While both African Americans and whites respondedsimilarly regarding the assessment of whether theywere healthy or not healthy, African Americansdescribed the attributes associated with healthy ornot healthy somewhat differently than whites. Also,both groups reported more varied meanings to theconcept of `healthy' than to `not healthy', suggestingthat `healthy' may be a multidimensional constructmore connected to ones' total life experiences than is`not healthy'. This study concludes that social andcultural factors such as race, ethnicity or healthexperiences may influence how individuals perceive anddescribe their health status and the processes used inmaking these assessments.
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Silverman, M., Smola, S. & Musa, D. The meaning of healthy and not healthy: Older African Americans and whites with chronic illness. Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology 15, 139–156 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006794215571
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006794215571