Britisb Journal of Clinical Pryrbology (1988).

27, 349-358 Printed in Greaf Brifain 349

0 1988 The British Psychological Society

The development of a measure of social

support : The Significant Others (SOS) Scale

M.J. Power
M R C Social Pgchiatry Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8 A F , UK

L.A. Champion
M R C Child Psychiatry Unit, Institute of Psychiatry

S. J. Aris
Soutb Eost Thames Regional Health Autborio

A description is presented of the development of a new scale to measure social

support which is called the Significant Others (SOS) Scale. The scale measures
different functional resources of social support that may be provided by a number
of significant role relationships within an individual’s social network. Preliminary
results from a sample of mature students show that the scale has good six-month
test--retest reliability, and significantly distinguishes between depressed and non-
depressed respondents. Details of a short form of the scale currently being
developed are also presented.

The aim of this paper is to describe the development of a social support scale. The
scale is designed to sample a subset of significant relationships that an individual is
likely to engage in - thus, family, work and friendship ties are included. The scale is
not intended to be exhaustive; instead, it is designed to examine the quality of the
individual’s most significant relationships. Before the scale itself is described, some
brief comments will be made about the aspects of social support that a good measure
should address.
(1) The scale should be capable of distinguishing between the structural and
functional aspects of support (e.g. Cohen & Wills, 1985). For the structural aspects
the scale should show which significant relationships do or d o not exist and which
relationships provide support; for the functional aspects the scale should measure
what type of support is provided in a particular relationship.
(2) The functional types of support should at a minimum be divided into the
general categories of emotional support vs. practical support. Although a large
number of distinctions exist in the literature between different categories of support,
these all appear to be subcategories of emotional or practical support (cf. Barrera &
Ainlay, 1983).
350 M . J. Power, L. A . Champion and S. J. A r i s
(3) The measure should provide data on both the under-provision and the over-
provision of specific’types of support. Although global measures of social support
suggest that relationships seldom provide too much (e.g. Champion, 1985;
Henderson, Bryne & Duncan- Jones, 1981), nevertheless, certain specific types of
support may be perceived as excessive in some relationships.
(4) The measure should provide information about the q d i t y of current
relationships, that is, whether or not the support is perceived to be adequate, or
whether it fails to match up to the individual’s expectations for that relationship (see
Cohen & Wills, 1985, and Henderson e t a/., 1981, for useful discussions of the
qualitative vs. quantitative aspects of social support). The approach to the
measurement of quality taken here is to compare the individual’s estimate of the
actual level of support that is perceived in a relationship with his or her ideal for what
such a relationship should be like; a relationship that matches closely to the ideal will
be judged to be more adequate than one that does not match closely (see Champion
& Power, 1987, and Power, 1987, for further discussion).
(5) The scale should measure perceived support in preference to received support,
because received support may be confounded with level of stress (e.g. Cohen &
Wills, 1985; Wethington & Kessler, 1986). It may nevertheless be useful to measure
the level of support received during crises, but the scale described here was designed
initially to focus on perceived rather than received support.
Taking all these considerations together, it appeared that current measures of
social support were inadequate and failed to meet one or more of these requirements.
Therefore, a self-report scale was designed, the details of which are presented
below.
Method
Design
A longitudinal design was used in which a group of women were contacted by post at two points in
time six months apart. The results presented here form part of a longitudinal study of the effects of
life-events and social support on mental health, the results of which are reported elsewhere (Power,
1988u, 6).

Subjects
A sample of 187 female members of the Open University Psychology Society who were primarily Open
University students were contacted initially by letter. On the first occasion 118 women responded and
a further 17 replied to the second set of questionnaires, which provided information for 135 (72.2 per
cent) of the total sample. Information was available from a total of 73 wornen for both occasions (that
is, 61.9 per cent of those who responded to the first set of questionnaires). Further details About the
sample are presented in Power (1988~);it should be emphasized that the sample included a wide range
of ages, occupations and backgrounds (c.g the age range of the follow-up sample was 24-63 years,
with a mean of 41.0 years).

The S&n.i)fcant Others (SOS) Scale

A 12 x 10 grid was produced as follows. First, a set of items that reflected either emotional support o r
practical support was collected from a number of social support questionnaires currently in use (c.g.
Barren, 1981 ; Champion, 1985; Henderson ct d.,1981 ; McFarlanc, Neale, Norman, Roy & Stcincr,
1981 ; Sarason, Levine, Basham & Sarason. 1983; Surtces, 1980) and from further items generated by
 Measure of social support 351
the authors. Redundant items were dropped from the list and those items that in the authors’ views were
conceptually related were combined to form single items. The aim was to generate five items for each
of the two categories of emotional and practical support. The following items were selected for
emotional support:
1. trust, talk to frankly and share feelings with;
2. lean on and turn to in times of difficulty;
3. get interest, reassurance and a good feeling about yourself;
4. get physical comfort;
5. resolve unpleasant disagreements if they occur;
and the following five items were selected to measure practical support :
6. get financial and practical help;
7. get suggestions, advice and feedback;
8. visit them or spend time with socially;
9. get help in an emergency;
10. share interests and hobbies and have fun with.
.
In the questionnaire, all 10 items were prefaced with the phrase ‘ T o what extent can you . . ?’ and they
were written along the ordinate axis of the grid.
The columns of the grid consisted of the names of 11 potential role relationships that the average
person might expect to engage in: namely, spouse or partner, mother, father, closest child, best friend,
an important relative, best neighbour. boss, work colleague, important professional (e.g. GP) and
closest brother or sister. In addition, there was a twelfth column labelled ‘other’ in which the
respondents were asked to state the relationship to them of any other individual who was important,
but who had not been included in the 11 named categories.
Two versions of the 12 x 10 grid were produced. The first was labelled ‘actual’ support and the
respondent was asked to rate each currently applicable relationship on each of the 10 support functions.
A 1-7 scale was used from 1 = never to 7 = always. If a relationship was not applicable, the respondent
was asked to leave the column blank. The second version of the grid was reworded to measure the
‘ideal’ level of support that the respondent would have liked for each of the relationships that were
currently applicable. Again they were asked to rate each relationship on each of the 10 functions on a
1-7 scale.

Procedure
A covering letter and a set of questionnaires were sent on two occasions six months apart to the female
members of the London branch of the Open University Psychology Society. The questionnaires were
included along with a regular mailing of the Society’s newsletter. The covering letter emphasized the
voluntary and confidential aspects of the study. A stamped addressed envelope was included for ease
of reply. The covering letter for the second mailing thanked those who had returned the first
questionnaire; it pleaded, in the nicest possible manner. with anyone who had not returned the first set
to consider returning the second set.
The set of questionnaires included the Goldberg & Hillier (1979) GHQ-28; this is a psychiatric
symptom measure that was originally designed to sample patients attending their general practitioner.
The 28-item scale consists of four subscales one of which is a measure of severe depression (Goldberg
& Hillier, 1979; Power, 19880).

Reeulte
The results section is organized as follows : first, descriptive statistics are presented
for the summary scores from the actual and ideal grids; second, the time 1 and time
2 intercorrelations for the social support scores are presented ; third, a criterion
groups analysis is presented ;fourth, the test-retest reliability scores ; and finally the
352 M. J. Power, L. A . Champion and S . J. A r i s
results are presented from a set of factor analyses which were primarily carried out
to assess the actual-ideal and emotional-practical distinctions.

Table 1. The mean ratings for each role collapsed across type of support

Actual Ideal Discrepancy Discrepancy

Role support support not recoded recoded
Spouse 3.9 4.7 0.8 1.2
Mother 2.6 3.4 0.8 1.6
Father 1.8 2.5 0.7 1.9
Closest child 2.5 2.7 0.2 0.7
Best friend 4.4 4.7 0.3 0.6
Important relative 2.1 2.4 0.3 0.9
Best neighbour 2.0 2.1 0.1 0.7
Important professional 1.5 2.0 0.5 1.1
(e.g. GP)
Boss 1.5 2.0 0.5 1.2
Work colleague 2.2 2.3 0.1 0.7
Closest brother or sister 2.7 3.5 0.8 1.5
‘Other ’ 1.8 1.9 0.1 0.7

Scores shown are for actual support, ideal support and the difference between the two rated
on a 1-7 scale. Recoded discrepancies take account of over-provision of support by recoding
values where actual > ideal to have a zero discrepancy ( n = 135).

Descriptive statistics
The scores for the social support measures summarized according to role
relationships are presented in Table 1 ; the table displays the actual scores, the ideal
scores and the discrepancies between the two. The highest actual ratings were given
to ‘best friend’ (4.4) and ‘spouse’ (3.9)’ whereas the lowest ratings were given to
‘GP’ and ‘boss ’. Moreover, a similar pattern was obtained for the ideal ratings with
both ‘best friend’ (4.7) and ‘spouse’ (4.7) having the highest expectations and with
only the miscellaneous ‘other’ category having a lower ideal score than either ‘GP’
or ‘boss’. The category ‘other’ was in fact seldom used by the respondents (48/135
or 35.6 per cent); when it was used it consisted of a heterogeneous mixture of
additional friends, ex-husbands, lovers, priests, an Open University tutor and a
dog.
Table 1 also shows the discrepancy scores calculated in two different ways. In the
first, the discrepancy is presented as the ideal score minus the actual score; these
scores show for example that the highest discrepancies are obtained by ‘spouse ’ (0.8)’
‘ mother’ (0.8)’ ‘father’ (0.7) and ‘closest brother o r sister’ (0.8)’ that is, the highest
discrepancies seem to originate in close family ties. However, in the second method
of calculating discrepancy scores, account is taken of discrepancy scores which
indicate an over-provision (i.e. where an actual score is bigbet than its equivalent ideal
 Measure of social support 353

score) by recoding these values to zero. This technique leads to higher discrepancy
scores. It also reveals that the same four relationships of ‘father’ (1.9), ‘mother’
(1.6), ‘closest brother or sister’ (1.5) and ‘spouse’ (1.2) again occupy the first four
places, though the fact that ‘father’ is now clearly in first place whereas ‘spouse’ has
dropped to fourth suggests that spouses sometimes provide more than is expected of
them, but fathers seldom do.

Table 2. The mean ratings for the emotional and practical types of support collapsed
across roles (ratings are on a 1-7 scale)

Actual Ideal Discrepancy Discrepancy

Function support support not recoded recoded
Emotional
1. Trust, talk to frankly 4.6 5.6 1.o 1.2
2. Lean on 4.4 5.4 1.o 1.3
3. Get interest, reassurance 4.5 5.3 0.8 1.2
4. Physical comfort 3.0 4.0 1.o 1.1
5. Resolve disagreements 4.5 5.9 1.4 1.6
(Mean) 4.2 5.3 1.1 1.3
Practical
6. Financial and 3.9 4.3 0.4 0.9
practical help
7. Suggestions, advice 4.6 5.3 0.7 1.o
8. Visit socially 4.4 4.7 0.3 0.6
9. Emergency help 5.3 5.9 0.6 0.9
10. Interests, 3.9 4.3 0.4 0.8
hobbies and fun
(Mean) 4.4 4.9 0.5 0.9
Recoded discrepancies recode values of actual > ideal as zero in order to take account of
over-provision of support (n = 135).

The scores for the measures summarized by support functions rather than by roles
are shown in Table 2. It should be noted that the overall means for Table 2 are not
equivalent to those in Table 1 because, whereas the values in Table 2 are based on
the whole sample, the values for roles are based only on the subsample of
respondents for whom that role was applicable (e.g. 48/135 for the smallest category
of ‘other’ cited above). From the ratings for actual support it can be seen that the
emotional and the practical items are given similar ratings with the exception of the
‘get physical comfort’ item which is rated much lower. This item also receives the
lowest ideal rating. The discrepancy scores show that there are higher discrepancy
scores for all five of the emotional items than for the five practical items, despite the
more mixed picture that appears from a consideration of the actual or ideal scores on
their own.
354 M. J. Power, L. A. Champion and S. J . A r i s

Intercorrelations of summary social support scores

The Pearson r correlations for the four summary support scores formed from the
combinations of actual and ideal with emotional and practical support were all
positive and significant and ranged from 0.42 to 0.76 (all Ps < 0.001). A quantitative
measure of the total number of role relationships for each respondent (n) did not
correlate significantly with any of these summary support scores.

Table 3. The mean ratings for support with division of sample according to GHQ-
28 scores
Group 1 Group 2 c;roup 3
Symptom-free Non-depressed Depressed
(n = 34) casc (n = 27) case (n = 15) t

Actual emotional 4.24 4.20 4.27 1 = 2=3

Ideal emotional 5.20 5.05 5.78 1 = 2<3
Actual practical 4.54 4.35 4.52 1 = 2=3
Ideal practical 4.83 4.74 5.39 1 = 2<3
Discrepancy : emotional 1.07 1.16 1.67 1 = 2<3
Discrepancy : practical 0.80 0.74 1.24 1 = 2<3

Group 1 = symptom-free; group 2 = case (non-depressed); and group 3 = case (depressed).

The final column shows significance o f t tests in which comparisons with group 3 are one-
tailed.

Criterion groups validity analrJis

The respondents' scores on the GHQ-28 were used to divide the time 1 sample into
three groups (see Power, 19876 , for a discussion of the cut-off scores) :
(i) non-tase (n = 34) those respondents who scored zero on the complete scale
~

and zero on the depression subscale;

(ii) non-depressed cases (n = 27) - respondents who scored > 4 on the complete
scale and < 5 on the depression subscale.
(iii) depressed cases (n = 15) - respondents who scored > 4 on both the complete
scale and the depression subscale.
ANOVAs were carried out for an unbalanced design with the SPSSX statistical
package. A series of planned contrast t tests showed that there were no significant
differences between the three groups in their ratings of actual support for both the
emotional and the practical categories (see Table 3). The results show that the
depressed cases have higher ratings for their ideal levels of emotional and practical
support than either the non-depressed cases or the symptom-free non-cases. These
differences are also reflected in the discrepancy scores : the depressed cases have
higher discrepancies for emotional and practical support than d o the other two
groups.
 Measwe of social support 355

Test-retest reliability
Seventy-three of the women completed the Significant Others Scale at two points in
time six months apart. The test-retest correlations for the four summary support
scores were all highly significant and ranged from 0.73 to 0.83. These correlations are
based on scores calculated where ratings were provided on both occasions for the
same role relationships. The correlation between the quantitative measure n and the
follow-up n of r = 0.646 shows that there were some changes in the size of the
network of significant others during the six-month period.

Factor anahsis
A number of factor analyses were carried out, though for the sake of brevity only a
sample of those based on discrepancy scores are presented here. Factor analyses were
carried out with SPSSX ; a principal components analysis was followed by varimax
rotation to select the main factors.
An analysis of the discrepancy scores summarized for support functions produced
the following three-factor solution (the variable numbers, which refer to the items
listed in the earlier description of the scale, loading on each factor are shown in
decreasing order of importance) :
Factor 1 - ‘emotional support’; 39.1 per cent of variance; variable nos 1, 2, 3, 5, 7
Factor 2 - ‘social fun’; 14.8 per cent of variance; variable nos 10, 8, 4, 3
Factor 3 - ‘practical support’; 10.6 per cent of variance; variable nos 9, 6, 7, 5.
The analysis for the discrepancies suggests that emotional support (without the
physical comfort item) is separable from practical support, and that practical support
might be best subdivided to include a ‘social fun’ component.
Preliminary factor analyses for the scores summarized by roles rather than by
functions produced shallow scree slopes with large numbers of factors and low
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin values. These results suggested that there was considerable
variation in actual and ideal support from one role relationship to another. For
example, factor analyses of the discrepancy scores for ‘spouse’ and for ‘mother’
produced broadly similar two-factor solutions that could be labelled emotional and
practical support, although the order of the individual variables loading on each
factor varied. However, the factor analyses for ‘father’ and ‘best friend’ included a
third factor that might best be labelled ‘physical fun’. It appears therefore that there
can be no definite answer to the question of the optimum number of factors, because
this number varies according to the role relationship.

Discussion
The main findings from the study showed the following. First, the SOS provides a
good measure of perceived provision of social support in a range of significant
relationships. Different role relationships clearly lead to different ratings on the
measures of actual and ideal support. Second, when the scores were summarized
across functions, the discrepancy between ideal and actual support tended to be
3 56 M. J. Power, L. A. Champion and S. J . Aris

higher for the emotional items. Third, further evidence of the importance of the
discrepancies on the emotional items came from the criterion groups validity
analysis ;thus, depressed cases from the GHQ-28 showed much higher discrepancies
than either symptom-free controls o r non-depressed cases. The results from this
analysis also showed that there were significantly higher discrepancies for the
practical support items for the depressed cases ; they showed that the discrepancies
arose because the depressives had significantly higher ideals, but did not rate their
levels of actual support lower than did the other two groups; and overall that there
was good evidence for the validity of the scale from these results. Fourth, item
intercorrelations for the qualitative measures were relatively high, but these were
independent of the quantitative measure of the number of role relationships present.
Fifth, the factor analyses show that, despite the significant positive correlations of the
qualitative measures, there is good evidence for the distinction made between ideal
and actual support and between emotional and practical support. However, the
precise composition of the factors varies from relationship to relationship and there
is some evidence for a factor of ‘physical/social fun’ that may be more important in
some relationships than in others. Sixth, the six-month test-retest reliability scores
showed that there was a good level of correlation for the summary qualitative
measures and for the quantitative measure over this period of time.
One of the main findings from these analyses is that there is good evidence that
social support should be considered both in terms of its structure and in terms of its
functions (Cohen & Wills, 1985). The results particularly from the factor analyses
and from the criterion groups validity analyses show that the emotional-practical
division of types of functions of support is a useful one. Similarly, the actual vs. ideal
distinction is not only a useful distinction between two different aspects of support,
but this distinction may also be useful in the investigation of problems such as
depression (cf. Power, 1987). These results provide further support for the
proposals made by a number of different authors that depressives typically have high
or unrealistic expectations of themselves and of other people (e.g. Arieti &
Bemporad, 1978; Beck, Rush, Shaw & Emery, 1979).
The relatively high intercorrelations within some of the emotional and practical
items and the results of the factor analyses suggest that a short form of the SOS could
usefully be developed. A short form of the scale might be particularly useful if it is
necessary for a study to include a number of other scales, in which case the inclusion
of up to 240 potential ratings for social support will be particularly off-putting for
some of the respondents. Indeed, we are currently collecting data from a short form
based on the following items: (1) can you trust, talk to frankly and share feelings with
x ? (2) can you lean on and turn to x in times of difficulty? (6) does x give you
practical help? and (8) can you spend time with x socially? The question of the
validity of the scale is presented in Power (1988b), in which it was found that the level
significantly distinguished a group of depressed respondents from respondents that
were not depressed, However, it will be necessary to address further aspects of the
construct and concurrent validity of the scale in future studies that consider, for
example, groups known to be high or low in social support, and that compare the
SOS with other measures of the quality of support. Evidence for the predictive
validity of the scale is presented in Power (1988b), in which it was found that the level
 Measure of social support 357
of support at time 1 was a significant predictor of depression six months later even
when time 1 depression was taken into account. This finding also suggests that
perceived poor support may be more a cause of depression than a consequence.
In conclusion, the SOS provides a flexible instrument for the measurement of an
individual’s perceived support. The preliminary findings with the scale provide
corroboration that the distinctions of actual vs. ideal and emotional vs. practical
support are both necessary and useful. The scale has good reliability over a six-month
test--retest period and there are some preliminary validity data for the scale. It also
allows the researcher to investigate significant role relationships that may be relevant
to one particular population but not to another. Finally, the scale is designed to allow
the individual to state his or her own optimum level of support rather than imposing
normative values of how much support each person should have; it takes account of
the fact that there is considerable variation in how much people require from their
relationships.

Acknowledgements
O u r thanks t o Brigid MacCarthy for her helpful comments on the scale, and to the organizers of the
London branch of the Open University Psychology Society for access to their members.

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Received 29 April 1987; revised version received 10 Jnb 1987