Blaxter M
School of Social and Economic Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, UK.
Soc Sci Med. 1997 Mar;44(6):747-56. doi: 10.1016/s0277-9536(96)00192-x.
How do people themselves think about inequalities in health? The topic has rarely been investigated, and oblique evidence has to be drawn from research on general lay ideas about health and the causes of illness. Data from a large British survey are combined with a review of the extensive body of, more usually, qualitative research on attitudes to health in Western industrialised societies. One tentative conclusion is that social inequality in health is not a topic which is very prominent in lay presentations, and paradoxically this is especially true among those who are most likely to be exposed to disadvantaging environments. Possible explanations are offered in terms of the effects of widespread "health promotion" activities, and the way in which lay theorising incorporates relationships between the group and the individual. The methods used in asking people to talk about health are also relevant: accounts of health and illness are accounts of social identity, and it is unreasonable to expect people to devalue that identity by labelling their own "inequality".
人们自身如何看待健康方面的不平等？这个话题很少被研究，必须从关于健康和疾病成因的一般外行观念的研究中获取间接证据。来自一项大型英国调查的数据，与对西方工业化社会中关于健康态度的大量（更常见的是定性）研究综述相结合。一个初步结论是，健康方面的社会不平等并非外行表述中非常突出的话题，矛盾的是，在那些最有可能接触到不利环境的人群中尤其如此。从广泛的“健康促进”活动的影响，以及外行理论构建将群体与个体之间的关系纳入其中的方式方面给出了可能的解释。询问人们谈论健康所使用的方法也很重要：对健康和疾病的描述就是对社会身份的描述，期望人们通过给自己贴上“不平等”的标签来贬低这种身份是不合理的。
