AN INTERNATIONAL STUDY ON MEASURING SOCIAL SUPPORT - INTERACTIONS ANDSATISFACTION

Recently, a new instrument was developed to measure social support. It consists of two parts; the Social Support Questionnaire for Transacti ons (SSQT) and the Social Support Questionnaire for Satisfaction with the supportive transactions (SSQS). The SSQT measures the number of su pportive interactions and has proved to have good psychometric propert ies. From the taxonomy that was used for the present study, it results that social support in general consists of two aspects. These are, on the one hand, actual supportive transactions and, on the other hand, the perception of being supported or the satisfaction with the social support provided. In the present study, two research questions were ad dressed. The first concerned the psychometric properties of the SSQS, measuring the individual's satisfaction with the supportive interactio ns provided. Secondly, the relative contribution of both supportive in teractions (the SSQT) and the satisfaction with the support provided ( the SSQS) were assessed, in explaining the level of health related qua lity of life outcome. The data of 744 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patien ts from four different countries (116 French, 238 Norwegian, 98 Swedis h and 292 Dutch patients) were used in the present study. At the entry of the study, all patients fulfilled four out of seven American Rheum atism Association (ARA) criteria and had a disease duration of 4 years or less. The results of the study indicate that the SSQS has good psy chometric properties across countries. Cronbach's alpha for the emotio nal support scales was 0.80 or more, and for the instrumental support subscales around 0.60. The standardized regression coefficients demons trated that, compared to supportive interactions, support satisfaction was more relevant in explaining health related quality of life measur es, although it is recommended that the SSQT and SSQS be used to compl ement each other. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd