Cardiff University | Prifysgol Caerdydd ORCA
Online Research @ Cardiff 
WelshClear Cookie - decide language by browser settings

Beyond beer, fags, eggs and chips? Exploring lay understandings of social inequalities in health

Popay, Jennie, Bennett, Sharon, Thomas, Carol, Williams, Gareth Howard, Gatrell, Anthony and Bostock, Lisa 2003. Beyond beer, fags, eggs and chips? Exploring lay understandings of social inequalities in health. Sociology of Health & Illness 25 (1) , pp. 1-23. 10.1111/1467-9566.t01-1-00322

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

This paper seeks to contribute to the limited body of work that has directly explored lay understandings of the causes of health inequalities. Using both quantitative and qualitative methodology, the views of people living in contrasting socio-economic neighbourhoods are compared. The findings support previous research in suggesting that lay theories about causality in relation to health inequalities, like lay concepts of health and illness in general, are multi-factorial. The findings, however, also illustrate how the ways in which questions about health and illness are asked shape people's responses. In the survey reported on here people had no problem offering explanations for health inequalities and, in response to a question asking specifically about area differences in health experience, people living in disadvantaged areas 'constructed' explanations which included, but went beyond, individualistic factors to encompass structural explanations that gave prominence to aspects of 'place'. In contrast, within the context of in-depth interviews, people living in disadvantaged areas were reluctant to accept the existence of health inequalities highlighting the moral dilemmas such questions pose for people living in poor material circumstances. While resisting the notion of health inequalities, however, in in-depth interviews the same people provided vivid accounts of the way in which inequalities in material circumstances have an adverse impact upon health. The paper highlights ways in which different methodologies provide different and not necessarily complementary understandings of lay perspectives on the causes of inequalities in health.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
Uncontrolled Keywords: Health inequalities ; Lay knowledge ; Moral identity ; Area effects ; Structural factors ; Individual behaviour
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISSN: 0141-9889
Last Modified: 08 Jan 2020 04:13
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/3149

Citation Data

Cited 124 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item Edit Item