Social relationships and health: findings from the Iranian Health Perception Survey (IHPS)

Objective (s): To assess social relationships status oamong Iranians and find out its association with their health condition.Methods: It was a cross-sectional study of a sample of 27,883 general population of Iran aged 18 to 65 years. Social relationships were measured using a single item rated on a 5-point Lkert scale. Self-reported health also was measured by a similar question. Logistic regression analysis was performed to analyze the data.Results: Most participants indicated that they had good and very good social relationships. Gender, employment status, and income had significant association with social relationships. Negative assessment of health increased the risk of low social relationships up to 6.58 times and similarly negative assessment of very poor or poor social relationships increased the risk of lower health status up to 5.6 to 7.3 times respectively. Conclusion: The findings suggest that social relationships are associated with social factors such as income, gender and employment. Also social relationship has significant effect on public’s health. Perhaps social relationships could be considered as a mediatory factor between social condition and health.