Do gender and age affect an individual's sense of coherence? an environmental psychology perspective of flood survivals in Indonesia

Abstract

There is substantial evidence that in the aftermath of a disaster, an individual's sense of coherence (SOC) plays an important role in promoting one's sense of well-being. The SOC is regarded as a core component of the salutogenic model of mental health. Disaster survivors are frequently subjected to traumatic experience and have higher psychological distress prevalence rates than people in the general population. The present study aimed to investigate possible socio-demographic differences (gender and age) on the sense of coherence (SOC) among disaster survivors in Indonesia. A total of 194 respondents (71 male and 123 females) from across the country participated in the online survey. A factorial ANOVA using JASP was conducted to investigate the main effects of gender and age groups and the interaction effect of these variables on the SOC level. The findings were two folds, age group variance was significantly associated with the SOC, while gender did not significantly associate with the SOC. The main effect of Age groups was F (2, 962.773) = 4.307, p = 0.005, indicating a significant difference of SOC between young adult, middle adult, and late adult groups. Theoretical implications and future direction of this study are discussed.