Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

The structural relationship among gender role conflict, social support and health behavior in older men

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/mw22v911k

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  • Inquiry into the cause of men's premature mortality has been historically framed in a biological deterministic perspective. This research takes an alternative view whereby the possible interactions of psychosocial variables with men's health promoting and health seeking behaviors are examined using cross-sectional survey data with older men. Specifically, this research explored the relationships among gender role conflict, perceived social support, and older men's health behaviors. Traditional pencil/paper (n=256) and electronic (n=147) surveys were completed by older men aged 40 and over selected from university alumni of a large western university. As the Gender Role Conflict Scale (O'Neil et al., 1986) had not been previously validated within a sample of older men, confirmatory factor analysis was used to verify that the instrument performed as well or better in older men than in previous samples of college age men. Secondly, multiple regression and canonical correlation was used to find that gender role conflict predicts less perceived social support in our sample. Moreover, restrictive emotionality appears to have the greatest influence on perceived social support and interacts greatest with emotional/informational support. Last, structural equation modeling was used to validate the findings from the regression analysis as well as determine that perceived social support predicts health promoting behaviors in our sample. While there did not appear to be a direct effect of gender role conflict on health seeking behaviors as hypothesized, health promoting behaviors did predict health seeking among these men. The findings from this study are an important step into examining how the gender role socialization of men may relate to health through protective and harmful behaviors supported by normative standards. This research allows health researchers to examine gender role conflict in older men through the validation of an instrument, and suggests that men who are highly socialized into male role norms are less likely to benefit from the well documented stress buffering effects of social support.
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