THE FACTOR STRUCTURE OF ANTONOVSKY SENSE OF COHERENCE SCALE IN SWEDISH CLINICAL AND NONCLINICAL SAMPLES

Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses of Antonovsky's Sense of Coherence Scale (SOCS) were run on two clinical and two non-clinical S wedish samples (N = 915). Confirmatory factor analyses did not support the hypothesis of a single common factor measured by all SOCS items, nor the three SOC components posited by Antonovsky. Exploratory factor analysis structures were similar enough across samples to propose the existence of three more or less stable factors. Although simple struc ture was not obtained, the first two factors were basically equivalent to Antonovsky's meaningfulness and comprehensibility components, resp ectively. On the basis of the high-loading items meaningfulness was in terpreted as a zest-depression dimension and comprehensibility as into lerance vs tolerance for emotional conflict. The third factor was only distantly related to manageability, with the items involved all refle cting interpersonal trust and mistrust. The validity of these interpre tations was supported by differential correlations between these facto rs and the Depression, Anxiety and Paranoia subscales of SCL-90. (C) 1 998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.