Assessing social support: The Social Support Questionnaire.

TLDR

The study introduces the Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ) and outlines four empirical investigations that employ it. The SSQ generates scores for the number of available supports and satisfaction with those supports, and the studies examine its psychometric properties, correlations with personality and adjustment, relationships to life changes, and an experimental test of support on task persistence. Results indicate the SSQ is reliable, that social support is more strongly linked to positive life changes, negatively associated with psychological discomfort in women, and facilitates persistence on frustrating tasks. Author information provided.

Abstract

Abstract : A measure of social support, the Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ), is described and four empirical studies employing it are described. The SSQ yields scores for (a) number of social supports, and (b) satisfaction with social support that is available. Three of the studies deal with the SSQ's psychometric properties, its correations with measures of personality and adjustment, and the relationship of the SSQ to positive and negative life changes. The fourth study was an experimental investigation of the relationship between social support and persistence in working on a complex, frustrating task. The research reported suggests that the SSQ is a reliable instrument, and that social support is (1) more strongly related to positive than negative life changes, (2) more related in a negative direction to psychological discomfort among women than men, and (3) an asset in enabling a person to persist at a task under frustrating conditions. Research and clinical implications are discussed. (Author)