Revisiting Social Support: Integration of Its Dimensions

Revisiting Social Support: Integration of Its Dimensions

Current literature on social support shows divergence in concepts and research operationalizations. Integrative work is essential to keep the concept theoretically meaningful and empirically viable. The present paper attempts to integrate various dimensions of social support: (1) instrumental-expressive support, (2) perceived-actual support, and (3) routine-crisis support. Using data from the 1993-94 Albany survey, we constructed measures for each of the dimensions, subjected them initially to exploratory factor analysis, and identified summary measures for each. Then, a confirmatory factor analysis was performed to organize these summary measures as indicators for four (first-order) latent variables, presumably subconcepts of social support. Informed by the relationships among these first-order latent variables, we further constructed two second-order latent variables with the first-order variables as their indicators. Finally, this structure of latent and empirical variables of social support was examined for its effects on distress, indicated by four factors of the CESD. Results demonstrate that (1) there is a strong fit between the conceived structure of social support and its empirical measures, (2) instrumental-expressive dimension constitutes the second-order latent variables, suggesting their conceptual significance for social support, and (3) both the second-order social support variables show significant effects on distress. This work represents an initial step in systematically integrating various aspects of social support so that this sociological concept will continue to occupy its central position in the analysis of the stress process.