0 - Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine

Biopsychosocial Effects Among Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting Patients 33
Assessing Social Support. Social support will be measured by The Social Support
Behavior Scale (SSB) (Vaux, Rediel, & Stewart, 1987). The SSB is a 45 item instrument
designed to assess five modes of social support behavior: emotional, socializing, practical
assistance, financial assistance, and advice/guidance. Scores for the subscales are tallied
by summing the individual items on a five point scale: (l=no one is doing this for me,
2=someone might do this for me, 3=some family/friend will probably do this, 4=some
family/friend will certainly do this, 5= most family/friends will certainly do this). The
wording of the scales will be modified to assess currently enacted social support
behaviors. The possible range is 45-225. The items will be tallied for each of the five
scales indicating the types of support:
1) emotional (items: 3, 8, 12, 16, 20, 23, 27, 30, 31, 36), 2)
socializing (items: 1,2,5,9. 13, 18,24),3) practical assistance (items
4, 6, 7, 11, 34, 37, 40, 43), 4) financial assistance (items: 14 ,21 ,26,
29,32,38,41,45), and 5) advice/guidance (items: 10, 15, 17, 19,22,
25,28, 33, 35, 39, 42, 44).
The SSB is designed to assess available supportive behavior and to
do so separately for family and for friends. The slight changes in wording
will enable the study to tap supportive behaviors actually enacted in the face
of CABG stress. The five subscales have been confirmed through factor
analysis. This is an important measure not only for the study of social support
networks, but also for use in clinical practice, as a way of understanding real
and potential supports available for clients. The items will be correlated with
other variables to identify a positive or negative relationship and magnitude.
The SSB has very good internal consistency with alphas exceeding .85. It
also shows great concurrent validity having significant correlations with
social support network associations, support appraisals, and the Inventory of
Socially Supportive Behaviors (Vaux, et aI., 1987).