SOCIAL SUPPORT IN SPOUSES OF CANCER-PATIENTS - WHAT DO THEY GET AND TO WHAT END

Using a retrospective design, the authors assessed several different a spects of social support (perceived, received, satisfaction with recei ved, and support seeking) in 95 spouses of cancer survivors. The goals of the investigation were to (a) describe in detail the differences b etween husbands and wives on these support dimensions and (b) explore whether the relation between support and adjustment was different for husbands as compared to wives. While husbands and wives were generally similar in their general perceptions of available support and in the amount of support they reported seeking, consistent with our hypothesi s, compared to husbands of breast cancer victims, wives of prostate ca ncer victims reported receiving more support and being more satisfied with the support they received. Measures of social support predicted h usbands' reports of marital satisfaction and adjustment, but not wives ' reports. Partial correlation analyses indicated that sex differences in these support-adjustment links were not attributable to difference s in age, or in the time between completing treatment and participatin g in the study Sex differences observed in the present study are inter preted as highlighting the need for theory development to account for the complex mechanisms underlying links between supportive transaction s and marital satisfaction and adjustment.