The relationship between quality of life and sense of coherence in patients presenting for care in a chiropractic practice-based research network

Introduction Antonovsky's sense of coherence (SOC) has been shown to positively correlate with quality of life (QoL). We examined the relationship between socio-demographic data and clinical covariates along with various QoL domains to SOC in patients presenting for care within a chiropractic practice-based research network. Methods: In addition to providing socio-demographic information and clinical covariates, patients attending care within a PBRN completed the PROMIS-29 and PROMIS global health to measure of QoL and SOC-29 to measure SOC at baseline. In addition to descriptive statistics, we utilized a random forest analysis to assess the predictively ability of covariates to SOC. Results: Our dataset was comprised of a convenience sample of 1980 responders (average age = 40.72 years; 1494 females and 486 males). The mean T scores (T1/T2) for the various QoL domains physical functioning (50.97), anxiety (52.03), depression (47.47), fatigue (51.15), ability to participate in social roles and activities (54.44), sleep disturbance (59.85), pain interference (51.27), global physical health (GPH) (49.34) and global mental health (GMH) (50.69). Mean pain intensity rating was 4.23. The mean SOC-29 was 148.34. The most important covariates to changes in SOC were: GPH, depression, anxiety age, fatigue and sleep disturbance. Partial dependence plots revealed that increasing GPH, GMH and age of patient predict increasing SOC. A high SOC was predicted in the presence of low GPH given a high GMH scoring. Conclusions: The mental health QoL domains had a stronger predictability for SOC than physical health domains.