title: The concept of hardiness: a brief but critical commentary.
abstract: This paper is a brief critique of the concept of hardiness. While the concept is appealing in its potential to elucidate the relationships between stress, health and illness, I argue that there are problems with how the concept is defined, measured and applied. In particular, the usefulness of the concept is diminished through class and gender bias.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Low
mesh_terms: D002908:Chronic Disease; D006233:Persons with Disabilities; D004198:Disease Susceptibility / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D011287:Prejudice; D011581:Psychological Tests; D013312:Stress, Physiological / Q000523:psychology*; D016387:Women's Health