Structure analysis of Antonovsky's sense of coherence from an epidemiological mental health survey with a brief nine-item sense of coherence scale.

Antonovsky has proposed the sense of coherence (SOC) as a crucial factor that protects against symptoms of mental disease. A central issue in research on the SOC construct is whether this is most appropriately considered as one-dimensional or three-dimensional with comprehensibility (C), manageability (Ma) and meaningfulness (Me) as separate dimensions. In this paper we address this issue by means of confirmatory factor analysis of a shortened nine-item version of Antonovsky's original 29- and 13-items Sense of Coherence Scale (SOCS-29), using epidemiological data from a mental health survey of adults in local communities (N = 1,062). In addition to analysing the internal structure of the SOC items, we examine the association between estimated factor scores and variables expected to be statistically related to SOC. Goodness-of-fit indices were very good for the three-factor model but acceptable even for the one-factor model. In the three-factor model, however, the factors were found to be very highly or, with regard to Ma and C, even perfectly correlated. Moreover, the factor scores had very similar correlations with measures of psychological wellbeing, depression and anxiety and they are also very similarly related to age (and none of them are related to gender). We therefore conclude in favour of a one-factor model.