Abstract:
The purpose of the study was to explore whether these world views and specific measures of well being are related to each other and health. More specifically, the study looked at organism/mechanism orientation and its relation to one's sense of coherence and feeling of wellness. Orientation to life scores were taken and divided into two groups; subjects with commitment to an organismic world view, and subjects with commitment to a mechanistic world view. A T-test was then run to find out if there was any correlation with the basic research question; Do abstract concepts such as sense of coherence, and having a particular world view orientation affect one's well being? Two questionnaires, the Orientation to Life scale and the Organism Mechanism Paradigm Inventory (OMPI), were sent to a randomly selected sample of Ball State University faculty and staff spring semester 1993. A total of 120 people responded to the 300 surveys sent out. The mean scores for the groups studied seemed to support the hypothesis that persons with a organismic orientation would have a higher sense of coherence than persons in the mechanistic group. By analyzing the data in the pooled variance estimate, the 2-tail probability score was .070. This number was then divided by two, resulting in .035, indicating significance in the sense of coherence scoring. These results indicate a significant relationship between systems orientation and higher sense of coherence. Therefore, the basic research question was supported and affirmed by the data.