PART 1
Health Locus of Control
PART 2
CONCLUSIONS
METHODS
DISCUSSION
APPENDIXES
Future Studies
1.
Although it was beyond the scope of this project, future research conducted cross culturally and with a more representative pool of race/ ethnicity, SES, age, and gender would greatly improve the chances of seeing expected relationships. In addition, one might like to isolate a cultural group which is discriminated against in the United States and compare them to a mainstream population. Effects on health and HLC, specifically between integrated and assimilated individuals of different cultural backgrounds, may be telling.
2.Native American and Mexican populations both have agencies for the purpose of maintaining ‘traditional' medical systems and of passing on this knowledge to subsequent generations (Bodeker, 1994). The illustration depicts a Medicine Man I encountered in Mexico explaining to us this tradition. But threats to these models exist (ie. when land degradation forces individuals to go further for medical plants which serve the basis for the community's traditional medical system) (Bodeker, 1994, p. 283). This might be interpreted as a threat to HLC. One might investigate whether populations who share this model of medicine, but who differ in their ability to employ traditional methods, manifest different HLC tendencies. This could even be moderated by acculturation (ie. one who has accepted non-traditional forms of medicine might not exhibit a decrease in perceived control).
3.Wallston & Wallston, & De Vellis (1978) produced a multidimensional version of the previous HLC (Wallston, et. al, 1976), which includes Internality, Chance Externality, and Powerful Others subscales. Later research supports the use of this three dimensional approach over other models (Marshall, Collins, & Crooks, 1990). It would be interesting to use this model to compare cultures with different religions/ religiosities, especially with regards to Powerful Others.
I once read, "If the human brain were simple enough to understand, we would be too simple to understand it" (although I have no idea who the source of this quote is- lost in one of my many paper trails). One of the faults in doing such research as I have done is that we do not realize the scope of this statement's meaning, the complexity inherent in the human mind which we scrutinize. In all it's veracity, however, what would be the fun in not trying to understand the human brain in all its intricacies? After all, what else is it good for?
But whether studying other communities, our communities or any other social phenomenon it is important to see phenomenon in nature, society, and even in academia, not in its isolation but in its dynamic connections with other phenomena. It is important to remember that social and intellectual processes, even in academic disciplines, act and react to each other not against a spatial and temporal ground of stillness but of constant struggle, of movement, and change, even in human thought. In a situation of flux, the effective use of the delicate skills of navigating our way through may well depend on whether we are swimming against or with the currents of change or for that matter whether we are clear in what direction we are swimming, towards or away for the sea of our connections with our common humanity. Local knowledge is not an island unto itself; it is part of the main, part of the sea. Its limits lie in the boundless universality of our creative potentiality as human beings. |
