Toward resilience: medical students’ perception of social support

Abstract

Context: There is strong evidence that social support—particularly perceived social support— functions as a protective factor for health. Few studies have investigated how medical students perceive the types of social support they experience. Objective: To determine how osteopathic medical students perceive social support, understand the factors that influence their perceptions, and explore how group participation in a cocurricu-lar, academic program could affect student perceptions. Methods: In this cross-sectional study of 983 medical students at a multicampus osteopathic medical school in the Midwest, potential respondents were invited by email in March 2018 to participate in a self-reported evaluation of their perceived social support using a 40-question Interpersonal Support Evaluation List (ISEL). The demographic variables included gender, race, age, current phase in medical school, Hispanic heritage, campus assignment, and home-town population type. A total score for each type of social support and a summative score for overall perceived social support were calculated. Descriptive statistics were applied to provide a summary of the distribution of study variables. Bivariate analyses were conducted using student t test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) statistic to determine distribution of 4 social support constructs and overall social support by all the study variables; α