ORIGINAL PAPER
Sense of security in single women and women in lasting relationships
 
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Submission date: 2014-08-14
 
 
Final revision date: 2014-11-04
 
 
Acceptance date: 2014-11-04
 
 
Online publication date: 2015-03-18
 
 
Publication date: 2015-03-18
 
 
Health Psychology Report 2015;3(2):158-166
 
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ABSTRACT
Background
The modern preference for the independence of an individual and an individualistic attitude does not make for favourable conditions for the sense of security, a consequence of which may be the inability of an individual to build and sustain close emotional relationships with others. The sense of security, which is determined by a durable relationship and confidence in its future, is especially important for the health of an individual.
The goal of the current study was to assess the sense of security among women of different marital status (single, cohabiting and married). It was also investigated how the women assess their economic status and if it is correlated with their sense of security.

Participants and procedure
Two hundred and forty women with secondary or higher education, aged between 24 and 35, took part in the study. Participants were divided into three groups: single (80 women), cohabiting (82 women) and married (78 women).

Results
Sense of security differentiated single and married women only in the aspect of the sense of stability, whereas all of the other dimensions of the sense of safety differentiated married women and cohabiting women. Married women scored significantly higher. Economic status of the participants did not have an influence on their sense of security.

Conclusions
Treating a relationship as something temporary negatively influenced the sense of safety of cohabiting women. It is however impossible to exclude the possibility of a selection bias, where the women with a higher sense of safety have higher chances to form a legalized and stable relationship than women with a lower sense of security.
Copyright: © Institute of Psychology, University of Gdansk This is an Open Access journal, all articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.
eISSN:2353-5571
ISSN:2353-4184
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