Assessing Relational Values and Social Inclusion

Introduction:

Relational values are related to those eudemonic values that are associated to living good lives as well as reflections on how societal choices and preferences relate to justice, virtue, care and reciprocity notions (Arias-Arevalo et al., 2017). These relational values are derived from interactions with and responsibilities to humans, landscapes and other non-humans. Relational value is simply the extent one feels as being seen as important by other people. This is related to how people who are important to one`s life like their lovers, friends and family members care about them, how they internalise their interests, the extent they would go to make sacrifices for them, how much they need, admire and respect them. Whenever one feels valued in these areas, they experience high states of well-being psychologically (Secker et al., 2009). On the other hand, whenever one feels depressed, they are most certainly feeling lower relational value levels than they expect, require or feel they deserve. Some of the most important ways of measuring relational value are related to the following indicators; the amount of attention one receives, thoughtfulness degree, the ratio of positive and negative feelings that other people express and other people`s willingness to sacrifice on one`s behalf (Sung & Phillips, 2018). This study evaluates the factor structure, reliability and validity of relational value. In this study, we capture and quantify two main relational values, which are social inclusion and social status. The study does an assessment of whether sets of relational value statements demonstrate internal coherence either as multi-dimensional or single constructs. A comparison is done of different responses to different relational value statements and other statements are phrased in such a way that they represent value statements that are metaphorically phrased and that are intrinsic and instrumental.

People use different relational values, both consciously and unconsciously to plan and further generate their own actions, to comprehend, remember and anticipate the actions of other people. Relational values are not entirely cognitive as they are also made up of emotions, evaluative attitudes, judgements, motives and needs (Costello & Osborne, 2005). There are different social interactions and behaviours that are triggered by relational value and that is a result of the fact that there are different perceptions that are involved in the determination of who one is in relation to their partners and have a close relationship with motives. What this implies is that there are distinct behaviours in social interactions that are triggered by different relational values which evoke responses and actions that are distinct in relational partners (Sung & Phillips, 2018). Inappropriate actions according to relational values are classified as being immoral by those individuals who use those models and generate moral emotions that are negative like outrage, disgust, shame and guilt. Individuals are motivated to exhibit appropriate behaviours by these negative moral emotions in line with relational values and pioneer the disciplining og others so that they behave appropriately even on those instances when personal costs are incurred to facilitate disciplining. The European Union defines social inclusion as the possession of resources and opportunities that enable one to partake in social, economic and cultural life fully and to further enjoy standards of wellbeing that the society considers normal (Ward et al., 2009). There are three main dimensions of inclusion and these are; feeling worthwhile from participation in activities that are meaningful, experiences of friendship and hopefulness. Social inclusion is a multidimensional concept that brings together under one roof occupational aspects, psychological aspects and physical aspects. Sense of belonging is an example of a psychological aspect, housing an example of housing aspect and friendship is an example of a social aspect. The concepts of wellbeing and quality of life, citizenship, social participation and social quality are overlapped by social inclusion. Mental health professionals cite social inclusion as an important treatment outcome. There are different social inclusion measures, variable suitability and quality like the Social Inclusion Scale and the Social and Community Opportunities Profile. The Social Inclusion Scale was developed by Secker et al. (2009) by initially deriving those concepts associated to social inclusion. Over the years, there are questions that have been raised on the relevance, applicability and suitability of existing measures as social inclusion indicators. There are different measures that have been developed that do assessments of concepts that are related like social networks, social integration, life quality and others which represent composite measures that are built from selections of subscales and questions.

Psychodynamic Theory

There are up to 88 arts and mental health projects so far that have validated the SIS. The SIS emtirely (alpha = 0.85) together with its different subsets like social relations = 0.70, social acceptance = 0.76 and social isolation = 0.76 demonstrate sound internal consistency. Poor mental health is associated with low social inclusion levels while high empowerment levels are associated with high social inclusion. The traditional indicators of social status are wealth, occupation, individual and family incomes and education levels. People tend to attach different meanings to different social status components. As such, in the same breath that mortality is predicted by self-rated health, subjective special status could also be a value addition of an individual’s evaluation of their status and the actual implications of indictors that are objective. For instance, education attainment measures view graduation from high school as having the same value regardless of whether an individual graduated from an inner city high school or from an elite prep high school. Also, college graduates from diploma-mills are viewed as the same as college graduates from colleges that are highly ranked. Even with all this however, it is worth noting that the life chances of graduates from these different high school and college categories are quite different and there is a high likelihood that they would be sensitively captured through ladder ranking and not through crude levels of education. Material wealth is recognised widely as a source of social status. Other common sources are occupation and levels of education. Spirituality and ethical values are also recognised by some people as sources of social status. These are factors that are however, largely related to personal qualities and a subjective self-worth sense more than objective status marking (Gosling, Rentfrow & Swann, 2003).

Methods

This study collects quantitative data through structured interviews (Gravetter & Forzano, 2016). Our methods are made up of two main components which are; comparison of responses to different types of samples and diverse sampling. The methods that were used in this study were reviewed and approved by the Universities’ ethics board. There were value and attitude statements in our interviews which were followed by Likert scales for purposes of assessing agreement and disagreement. Factor analysis is used in this study for correlation of response patterns across groups of questions and eve single questions (Costello & Osborne, 2005).

Survey value statements and sample

A list of value statements was formulated that was related to relational values was formulated. These instrumental value statements were gotten from concepts that were advanced in overviews of relational value. For these value statements, each participant was required to evaluate the vale provided using a 5-point Likert scale with measures like highly disagree and agree. The main intention behind the use of the populations sampled here is to compare different populations and not in any way suggest that they are representative. Our results point out to relational value statements showing internal coherence as single dimensional constructs.

Discussion

From our study, two components have Eigen value of more than 1. These two factors are considered as strong factors: These are social inclusion and social status. This shows that only 2 components underlie the factor. The structure of investigation covered a set of variables that were considered by our factor analysis which was intended to determine whether there were clusters of correlation coefficients. It would be termed as important indications of latent. Every other latent variable has a close association with some amount of the overall variance of the variable that has been observed. The evenness in the distribution of the correlation matrix`s variance is indicated by Eigen values (Mahadevan et al., 2016). These are values that measure the amount of the variance of the variables that are being observed that factors explain. The common variance in factor analysis is calculated through the calculation of each variables communality values. Usually, this is achieved through calculation of the squared multiple correlation of each of these variables with others. The exploratory factor analysis that was carried out in this study with reference to hypothesis in which relational value statement responses were made up of factors that were distinct in themselves. In the present case, the Cronbach’s alpha for relational values items is coming out to be 0.738, showing that the scale is reliable. Relational value is an important mental health factor. While most modern psychiatrists hold the belief that mental disorders are mostly brought about by brain diseases, psychological views also make sense (Rosenberg, 1965). Individuals who are neurotic seek therapy for emotional states that are negative like depression and anxiety (Konrath, Meier & Bushman, 2014). At the root of these feelings, a core set of feelings like rage, pain and shame play an important role. People mainly possess these core feelings because they experience themselves as lacking in relational value in different core domains, even though they never want to know the key reasons and how to go to implement changes in different feelings. The reliability of the relational values items is measured by Cronbach’s alpha. As a thumb rule, if the value is more than 0.7 then the results would be termed as reliable. In the present case, the Cronbach’s alpha for relational values items is coming out to be 0.738, showing that the scale is reliable

Social inclusion is a multidimensional concept that involves possession of resources and opportunities that put one in a position of participating in cultural, social and economic activities fully to extents that the society considers as being normal (Mahadevan, Gregg & Sedikides). The feelings of respondents together with their perceptions of their social inclusion are measured by the SIS because individuals cannot possibly be considered as socially included unless they get the feelings of being socially included. This investigation is focused to validate the gold standard for measuring social inclusion. The SIS has demonstrated proper internal steadiness, responsiveness and parallel validity and has as such, been validated partially. Further testing of validity and reliability is however required in general population samples. This study aimed at validating social inclusion through the establishment of internal consistency, test-retest reliability and convergent validity. There are also close links between social status and health. Social status has been proven to show a relationship that is strong with indicators of health and even remained significant after the addition of objective indicators into analytic models simultaneously (Kruglanski et al., 2000). There is a positive correlation between the socioeconomic status of individuals and their health. The relationship between social status and health has been under spotlight for quite some time. Back in the 1960`s there was the belief among academics that health inequalities would reduce with the advancement of medical technologies and further development of economies. In the 1980`s it was however, established that these inequalities had actually increased. Max Weber observed that while an individual is at will to choose a certain lifestyle from existing choices, their social status largely determines their range of possible choices (Mahadevan, Gregg & Sedikides).

More recent studies point out that social status affects the health of individuals. There are three main ways in which this impact is reflected which are; education, income and occupation. According to Hoebel & Lampert (2020), those people with a higher professional status enjoy increased work autonomy, take part in labour that is not very manual, and their involvement in activities that would expose them to health risks is low. In the same breathe, there are positive associations between higher incomes and better nutritional status, medical services, housing conditions among other important health factors. Additionally, the health awareness of people with high levels of education is higher and their health-related knowledge is also relatively high. Zell, Strickhouser & Krizan (2018), argue that social hierarchy fundamentally constraints lifestyles and the living conditions of an individual. Additionally, the study observed that the exclusion of the effects of lifestyles from social status` overall impacts had the potential of significantly reducing the living conditions of an individual. We examined the association between health and social status. Our results indicate that social status has a positive impact on health, suggesting that those individuals with a higher social status, were healthier. We measured the correlation between social inclusion and loneliness and as per the correlation table, the data does not have a good concurrent validity as the correlation coefficient is less than 0.80. These findings are an indication that being isolated socially has no close association with most social support gaps; this is a group whose likelihood of getting distressed psychologically is low, relative to other individuals who are neither lonely nor socially isolated. This is in line with the findings of Russel. (1996). Additionally, those groups that are lonelier have lower likelihoods of being distressed psychologically.

The examination of social isolation and loneliness is quite insightful as it provides profiles that are more risk nuanced than would have been possible from the separate examination of loneliness and social isolation (Mathews et al., 2016). The findings could offer suggestions for intervention avenues tailored to risk individual`s unique needs. Loneliness is identified as being rooted in self-piety and weakness, a phenomenon that individuals can eliminate because it is not a physical ailment. It is worth pointing out that there are distinctions between social loneliness and emotional loneliness. Cacioppo (2018), argues that loneliness is a negative psychological response to existing discrepancies between desired social relationships and the relationships actually possessed. This definition points out that loneliness is a feeling in people that is characterised by an inadmissible lack of quality in different social relations that is also unpleasant and that happens when individuals have few social relations than they wish they had and also when the levels of intimacy that individuals hope for in their relationships are not there. Generally, emotional loneliness refers to the absence of the personal attachment with family members while social loneliness is largely known as the lack of social networks that could be characterised by the lack of circles of people that could enable the individuals to develop senses of belongingness. There are limitations of this study that need to be noted. First, while for examination of the relationships between variables structural equation modelling was used. In this context, this investigation evaluated study`s cross-sectional nature, drawing causal conclusions. Additionally in the dataset that this study used, there were some respondents who failed to respond in some instances which brought about a significant amount of missing values.

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