*1.6. Community Sense of Coherence (ComSOC)*

From a socio-ecological perspective [24], community is an important resource for various populations and helps them to adjust to new environments [15]. Membership in social groups can act as a social resource [19,22]. In this study, we used the relatively new concept of ComSOC, which has been developed as a culturally sensitive tool. This concept reveals how collective cultures define their SOC through community rather than individual frames, thereby emphasizing societal values. ComSOC embraces the individual's perception of a community in terms of Antonovsky's three components: Comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness [25]. Communal resources of comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness enable members of the community to express and to realize themselves, to feel satisfaction, to challenge and have communal interests, and also amplify feelings of affiliation and social connectedness [26,27]. In various studies, ComSOC has been found to be stronger among collectivistic minority cultures than among Western majority cultures and while it has been found to be negatively correlated with psychological problems, it has also helped to explain job satisfaction [28,29]. We assumed that, in the context of Syrian Arab culture, community coherence plays an important role in the refugees' adjustment to their new environment.

#### *1.7. Demographic Factors: Age, Level of Education, and Time Spent in the Refugee Camp*

Age serves as a predictor of mental-health problems, with research indicating that older women report more mental-health problems. Moreover, women from traditional and collectivistic societies, such as Arab societies, who are less educated usually report more mental-health symptoms than more educated women [30]. The immigration experience also plays a significant role, with older women and immigrants who are new residents of a country reporting more mental-health problems than younger women who are citizens of that country [31].

#### *1.8. Research Questions*

In accordance with the literature described above, the following research questions and hypotheses were formulated: (1) Are there differences between women who have resided in a refugee camp for up to a year and women who have resided in a refugee camp for between 1 and 2 years, in terms of exposure to war events, feelings/appraisal of danger, having received aid from any of a variety of sources, the coping resources of SOC and ComSOC, and/or the mental-health outcomes of anxiety, depression, and somatization? Based on a recent study, we hypothesized that a longer stay in the camp would be associated with higher levels of psychological problems, more feelings of danger, and weaker SOC. However, based on previous research [12], we did not expect that exposure to war experiences or having received aid would vary with the amount of time spent in the refugee camp. (2) Are there significant differences in the mental-health outcomes of women refugees (i.e., anxiety, depression, and somatization) depending on their educational level and their exposure to war events, feelings/appraisal of danger, receiving aid from any of a variety of sources, and/or the coping resources of SOC and ComSOC? We expected women with higher levels of education to report stronger SOC and fewer mental-health problems [30,32]. In addition, since no information on the independent variables of exposure to war events, feelings/appraisal of danger, or receiving aid was found, we hypothesized that level of education would not be associated with any differences in exposure to war experiences, appraisal of danger, or having received aid. (3) We evaluated a model in which different demographic variables (i.e., age, time spent in the refugee camp, and education level), as well as situational factors of exposure to war events, appraisal of danger, having received aid from organizations (or family or community members), and coping resources were entered as predictors of anxiety, depression, and somatization. We expected age and education level [33], time spent in the camp, exposure to war experiences, appraisal of danger, SOC, and ComSOC [8,12,26] to be significant contributors to the various mental-health outcomes. We hypothesized that while levels of education and the coping resources would have positive effects, age, exposure to war, and a relatively high appraisal of danger would have negative effects. In addition to evaluating the entire model, we also examined the roles of SOC and ComSOC in mediating various relationships between the demographic or situational variables and the outcome variables.
