Kinship and friendship: The association between different sources of social contact and self-rated health in Turkey

How does one’s connectedness in their social relationships affect their health? For a long time, this question has piqued the interest of sociologists. From Durkheim’s theory of suicide to recent empirical studies in medical sociology, the positive association between social integration and well-being has been well established. In this paper, we revisited this topic by focusing on how different sources of social contact is associated with self-rated health in Turkey. To do so, we examined how contact with a close friend, a parent, a sibling, and other family member – outside of one’s nuclear family – compares in terms of their association with self-rated health by using ISSP Social Network Data. We found that frequency of contact with a parent and other family member showed statistically significant and positive associations with self-rated health in some models, which was not the case for a sibling. In the full model accounting for all contact variables, however, only the frequency of contact with a close friend had a statistically significant and positive association with self-rated health. This study aims to start a discussion about the growing importance of non-kin ties in people’s lives in Turkey despite the increasing familialism in Turkish politics and social policymaking. Policymakers and social workers tackling issues such as social isolation, social exclusion, and loneliness in Turkey should consider the prevalence of non-kin networks on individuals’ well-being.