How Does the Social Support Affect Refugees’ Life Satisfaction in Turkey? Stress as a Mediator, Social Aids and Coronavirus Anxiety as Moderators

Abstract

The number of refugees has increased exponentially due to international crises, wars, and political pressures in recent years worldwide. Turkey hosts the largest refugee population in the world with 3,672,646 Syrian refugees. This study aimed to examine the relationship among refugees’ stress, life satisfaction, social support, coronavirus anxiety, and social aids they get during the COVID-19 process. We hypothesized that stress, social aids, and coronavirus anxiety could play a role in the relationship between life satisfaction, stress, and social support. A cross-sectional survey was used to collect data from 628 Syrian refugees via an online questionnaire in Turkey. Confirmatory factor, correlation, and multiple regression analyses were conducted. In addition, the moderator and mediator role of variables tested using the 95% bias-corrected confidence interval from 5000 resamples was generated by the bias-corrected bootstrapping method. The study results show that stress partially mediated the relationship between family support and life satisfaction and between friend support and life satisfaction. In addition, coronavirus anxiety had a moderating effect on the relationship between family support and stress and friend support and stress. Finally, social aids moderated the relationship between stress and life satisfaction. In conclusion, the role of social aids, stress, and coronavirus anxiety in the relationship between social support, stress, and life satisfaction has been revealed.

Social support and mental health: the mediating role of perceived stress

“…Consistent with the study's hypothesis, this research found that social support (from family, friends, and significant others) is negatively associated with perceived stress, indicating that social support decreases perceived stress. These results align with prior studies conducted in diverse cultural and demographic backgrounds (Ekmen et al, 2021;Özer et al, 2021;McLean et al, 2023;Yıldırım and Green, 2023).…”

“… Özer et al (2021) linked increased family support to lower stress levels, explaining 11% of stress variance. Ekmen et al (2021) found family and significant other support significantly reduce stress, with stress partially mediating life satisfaction. McLean et al (2023) among college students reaffirmed this link: more support meant lower stress.…”

The Double-Edged Sword Mediatized Integration Processes during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Families or family support have proven to be of great help during the Corona pandemic as they support each other (Ekmen et al, 2021).…”

Empirical Analysis of Population Urbanization and Residents’ Life Satisfaction—Based on 2017 CGSS

“…However, for most developing countries, the development level is not in line with people's demands and expectations for life satisfaction at the present stage in the perspective of the actual social situation [2,3]. To ensure the stable development of the economy, it has become an urgent problem to ease the life pressure of social individuals and improve their life satisfaction as far as possible [4,5].…”