Social Support Measurement and Intervention: A Guide for Health and Social Scientists.

Abstract

This is a useful book orientated towards the selection and development of measures of social relations suitable for assessment and intervention in studies of physical and psychiatric illness. The editors use the same format as in their earlier volume Measuring Stress: A Guide for Health and Social Scientists sponsored by the Fetzer Institute with the laudable aim of improving the dissemination of methods for measuring psychosocial concepts, in this case social support. After a first historical chapter there is an informative chapter on the different possible mechanisms, some competing, some complementary, by which social support may influence health, described within the context of the theoretical frameworks from which they were derived. This is interesting material, rarely brought together in the empirical literature, that is a helpful background to the chapters that follow on measuring social integration, social networks, and perceived and received support.