Perspectives on Salutogenesis of Scholars Writing in Afrikaans

Excerpt

Afrikaans is one of 11 official languages in South Africa, but with English, one of only two that is developed as academic language. Studies published in Afrikaans in which salutogenesis is addressed or in which the Afrikaans translation of Antonovsky’s sense of coherence instrument was used, have been conducted at five South African universities.

The literature search was conducted using the South African ePublications data base of Sabinet and the NEXUS data base for current and completed Masters dissertations and Ph.D. theses. The search words ‘salutogenese’, ‘kohesiesin’ and ‘Antonovsky’ were used alone and in combination. The only limitation was Afrikaans as language. A total of 79 relevant publications were found: 45 Masters dissertations, 10 Ph.D. theses and 24 journal articles. No books or book chapters published in Afrikaans could be found.

Most of the research conducted was done in psychology and industrial psychology. There were also a few studies in sport and recreation science, educational psychology, theology and even history.

Various studies described the relationship between different constructs such as sense of coherence, locus of control, job satisfaction, spirituality, self-concept, coping, burnout and stress-related symptomatology. Salutogenic characteristics were also described in different populations. Two history papers were published in which constructs (including sense of coherence) were used to interpret the experiences and behaviour of two South African historical figures.

Most of the studies were cross-sectional descriptive studies, but there were a few evaluated interventions and conceptual studies.