Apoio social: Aspectos da validade de constructo em estudantes universitários

Abstract

Although the concept of social support has received attention of the scientific community, there is not a valid measure for different cultures and contexts. The aim of this article is to replicate a social support scale in undergraduate students from Goiânia. The participants were 129 university students accessed in four high education institutions in Goiânia. As measure, the Social Support Questionnaire adapted to the Brazilian population was used. The results point to a good adaptation of the scales with alphas between 0.95 e 0.76, and factorial structure suited when compared to the original study. Significant differences between social support and the majority of socio demographic variables were not found. However, women refer more to material support (p=0,01) and affective (p=0,01) than men, and the ones who refer living with someone appraise more emotional support (p=0,00) and affective (p=0,03). It is discussed the necessity of new studies for latter subsequent explanation of the behavior of the measure and construct in different populations and cultures. © 2009 Departamento de Psicologia - Universidade Estadual de Maringá.