Conceptualizing and Assessing Social Support in the Context of the Family

Abstract

topics that lie at the heart of research on social support and the family . . . need to be addressed / examines some of these topics and seeks to offer a new perspective from which to examine them / the chapter has 2 themes / first, despite recognition of the multifaceted nature of the social support construct, too little attention has been paid to the interconnections among these elements / second, most research on social support has focused on the short-term consequences that support has for coping with life events; the long-term consequences of support for personality development and healthy functioning have remained largely unexplored begin . . . with an overview of the social support construct / describe the components of the support construct and highlight both the interconnections among these features and their impact on situation-specific coping and developmental outcomes / concludes with a discussion of the implications of these observations for further study of the support construct