PSYCHOLOGY MASTER'S THESIS ABSTRACT

Jennifer Jean Bobier
MA-Research
May 1999

Frequency and Perceived Adequacy of Received Social Support: Does It Vary Across Support Providers and Type of Support?

    It has long been recognized that social support is effective in ameliorating the deleterious effects of stress.  Recent research has moved toward an interactional theory of social support, which suggests that the benefits of support involve an interaction between the type of support provided and the source of this support.

    This study attempted to evaluate this support specificity model by measuring frequency and perceived effectiveness of different support/provider type combinations for different problems.  Participants from introductory psychology classes at California State University Long Beach (n = 142) were asked to describe a recent stressful experience, identify people (support providers) who helped them with this problem, describe what was said or done (type of support) in response to this problem, and then rate the quality of these responses (adequacy of support).

    Results found that overall, certain providers were reported as tending to give some support types more frequently than others, and further, certain support/provider type combinations were rated as being more helpful than others.  However, these frequencies and ratings were not necessarily consistent among different problem types.  This study also found that not all behaviors provided in response to a problem were supportive.  While these negative behaviors were not related to perceptions of received support, they were directly related to perceived support.

    Construct validation for this study was found with a significant inverse relationship between perceived adequacy of received social support and depressive symptomatology.  Adequacy of received support was also directly related to a separate measure of perceived support.

    Overall, this study found that different support providers were perceived as providing different types of support with varying degrees of effectiveness. The aspect of the support specificity model which seemed to have the most explanatory power was matching an appropriate support type to a particular problem.

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