Social support

Social support (Social Support ) is a resource, such as information needs, practical and material assistance needs to be satisfied with the other people through the central relationship psychosocial needs such as affection, recognition, identity, belonging and security, and instrumental needs.

It is customary to distinguish between social integration as the quantitative- structural aspect and the social support than the high - functional aspect. Next, a distinction between perceived ( or expected ) support ( Perceived available social support ) and received support ( Actually received social support ). In both cases we used scales for the subjective perception, since it is not about the objective conditions, but the interpretation from the perspective of those affected.

Further differentiations depend on the type of adjuvant interaction by both constructs can be divided again into emotional, instrumental and informational support. For emotional support, for example, sympathy, consolation or heat be communicated. A Beispielitem from the Berlin Social Support Scales ( BSSS ) emotional support is: " When I am sad, there are people who cheer me up ." Instrumental support includes assistance with work to be done, in the procurement of goods or the provision of financial resources ( Beispielitem: " There are people who offer me help when I need it "; BSSS ). Informational support includes good advice or, more generally, the transmission of information (example: " It was suggested to me an activity that should distract me something ").