What is a Sense of Coherence? (Definition)
Sense of coherence or SOC is a mixture of optimism combined with a sense of control.
The SOC has three main components:
- Comprehensibility
- Manageability
- Meaningfulness
Comprehensibility, a cognitive aspect, refers to the extent to which you might perceive both internal and external stimuli as being understandable in some kind of rational way. (Eriksson and Mittelmark, 2017).
This might also have to do with having the ability to see things as orderly, coherent, clear, and structured.
The idea of being of able to make something structured out of a chaotic situation makes it much easier for us to understand the context in which we might see things or view life.
Manageability, a behavioral aspect, has to do with the degree to which we might feel that there are resources at our disposal. These resources might then be used to help manage the stimuli that we are constantly bombarded with. (Eriksson and Mittelmark, 2017).
Formal resources might include things like social services or care staff, while informal resources might include things like family or friends.
Manageability also has to do with our ability to cope and solve problems and be willing to invest our time and energy to solve those problems – in other words, to manage those problems and see them as a challenge rather than a burden.
Meaningfulness, a motivational aspect, has to do with the extent to which we feel that our lives have some kind of emotional meaning. This might also come into play when we face some sort of problem or challenge. (Eriksson and Mittelmark, 2017).
How Can Your Sense of Coherence Affect Your Mental Health?
In a study done by Potier et al. (2017), a high sense of coherence can serve as a sense of protection from the burden of caregiving amongst older spouses.
Those who care for others often experience stress, and those they care for may even feel like they are a burden.
Having a sense of coherence may help those types of people in terms of coping with this kind of stress.
Having a sense of coherence may also be an irrefutable factor for health outcomes and quality of life, according to the study.
In the study, 79 caregivers were recruited from an outpatient clinic. The average age was 79 years, with 53% of caregivers being women. Of the care recipients, 82% had some cognitive impairment.
The study results found that older caregivers with a high SOC reported a lower hardship confidence interval. A higher hardship confidence interval was associated with patient functional limitations.
The study surmised that having a high sense of coherence seemed to act as a protective factor against the hardship of caregiving.
Another study by Schafer et al. (2018) indicates that having a sense of coherence is also important for the mental health of ICU staff and anesthesiology.
It is well known that hospitals, especially intensive care units, are stressful and demanding places. Both nurses and physicians are constantly bombarded with various stressors, including team conflicts and patient’s deaths.
Several studies have shown increased rates of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and other mental health issues amongst staff.
According to the study, a high sense of coherence (SOC) and general resilience, as well as an internal locus of control (LOC), has been identified as important health-benefiting factors amongst medical staff.
Sense of coherence was found to be the most important correlate of both general mental health and PTSD symptoms, in the ICU and anesthesiology unit.
The research surmises that with further longitudinal studies, implementing interventions focused on the enhancement of SOC in training programs might be a promising approach to preventing or reducing psychopathological symptoms amongst this type of staff.
What our readers think
It is a very interesting article! A new point of view on the contemporary challenge made by chaos of information. It makes a reader to think seriously
P.s. Greetings from Ukraine!
Hi, I would like to ask if the score measured in the scale is equal to for example 56 points, does it mean that the soc is high? thank you.
I would like to use these questionnaires in my mental health practice to help my providers do assessments with their clients. But I do not see a simple straight forward way to score the results can you help me with this please?
Hi Elaine,
Thank you for your question. This article should be useful for you as it talks about the scoring of the SOC-29 and SOC-13.
I hope this helps.
Kind regards,
-Caroline | Community Manager
Hi, I am a student of MA Psychology and wanted to use this scale for my dissertation, could you please guide me as to how i can get this scale and its norms?
Thankyou!
Hi Tazeen,
You can find the items and accompanying information about the scale in the original paper by Holmefur et al. (2014) here on ResearchGate.
Hope this helps!
– Nicole | Community Manager
Thank you for sharing Nicole.
Hello
I was wondering whether you need to seek permission to use SOC 13 questionnaire/scale for research purposes or not . If permission is needed how to gain it ? Your advice would be much appreciated.
Hi Syeda,
No, this scale is freely available to use for research purposes without needing permission from the authors. You’ll find all the items in Table 1 of Holmefur et al. (2014).
Hope this helps!
– Nicole | Community Manager
Thank you.
Regards.
Hi, won’t it be plagiarism if we use it without the consent of the author? Hope you can answer my question.
Hi Andrea,
As long as you’re using it for research and not commercial purposes, you can freely use scales published in journal articles without permission from the author as long as you include a reference and citation. It’s actually considered good practice to use scales developed and validated by other researchers to achieve comparability across studies, and it benefits the original creators when others use their scales 🙂
– Nicole | Community Manager
Am a lecturer from animal science department, university of Maiduguri, Nigeria. Am passionate about enhancing my English language communication both written and spoken.