Coping with economic deprivation during unemployment
Section snippets
Participants
Three hundred and twenty-nine people agreed to participate in this study. Two hundred and one people were unemployed (49% female, 51% male; age M=32.41, S.D.=10.18 years) and one hundred and twenty-eight people were in full-time employment (59% female, 41% male; age M=35.00, S.D.=11.73 years).
The unemployed participants were recruited through the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES). At the time of data collection during 1997/1998 the CES (now obsolete) was a national Government service
Validity of the study measures
Principal components analysis (PCA) was used to determine the validity of the factors in the current data. Thirty-nine items: depressive affect (15 items), self-esteem (6 items), solution-oriented coping (9 items), and affective-based coping (9 items), were submitted to PCA; the two single items assessing different aspects of economic deprivation were not included. The Kaiser Meyer Oblim measure of sampling adequacy (0.91) and Bartlett's test of sphericity (F=6629.33, p=0.000) both indicated
Discussion
The aims of this study were to investigate the impact of economic deprivation for material necessities and for meaningful leisure activity on psychological health during unemployment. In addition, the moderating influence of coping efforts on the relationship between economic deprivation and psychological health were investigated. There was, overall, support for the differential impact of economic deprivation for meaningful leisure activities and for material necessities on aspects of
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments.
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