The Role of Social Support in Multiple Morbidity: Self-Management among Rural Residents

Abstract

Social support generally is considered a valuable asset that may compensate for health service deficiencies among rural populations. Employing a mixed methods approach, we explored how vulnerable rural residents described social support in the context of self-management for multiple chronic conditions. Participants generally felt support was available, though emotional/informational support was perceived as less available than other types of support. Participants did not rely heavily on informal support to help them manage their multiple morbidities, preferring to call on their doctor and their own resources. We discuss implications of these findings for meeting this vulnerable population’s self-management needs.

Association of depressive symptomology and psychological trauma with diabetes control among older American Indian women: Does social support matter?

“…Understanding how social support Influences health-related behaviors and outcomes is a growing and important area of public health research. Greater amounts of positive social support is beneficial for T2DM management (Bardach, Tarasenko, & Schoenberg, 2011; Nicklett, Heisler, Spencer, & Rosland, 2013). While negative social support can result in a decrease in T2DM management behaviors (Grzywacz et al, 2012; Helgeson, Mascatelli, Seltman, Korytkowski, & Hausmann, 2016; Kahn, Stephens, Franks, Rook, & Salem, 2013; Mayberry, Egede, Wagner, & Osborn, 2015; Mayberry & Obsorn, 2012).…”

Gender differences in the roles for social support in ensuring adequate fruit and vegetable consumption among older adult Canadians

“…In this analysis, a respondent's score for each subscale was derived by averaging the constituent item responses. This rescaling was carried out in order to ease comparison between the two subscales, in line with previous studies that have included multiple forms of social support in their models (Bardach et al, 2011;Hand et al, 2014). The Cronbach's standardized alpha of these subscales for this analytic sample was 0.87 for tangible support and 0.95 for emotional/informational support, indicating good reliability.…”

“…Because the MOS subscales lack standard cutpoints or categorization (Sherbourne & Stewart, 1991), a range of approaches to scoring have been developed, including treating individual subscales as a continuous measure (Emlet et al, 2013), calculating study-specific tertiles (Lyyra & Heikkinen, 2006;Mazzella et al, 2010), and averaging responses across items (Bardach, Tarasenko, & Schoenberg, 2011;Hand, Law, McColl, Hanna, & Elliott, 2014). In this analysis, a respondent's score for each subscale was derived by averaging the constituent item responses.…”

Life begins at 60: Identifying the social support needs of African American women aging with HIV

“…This finding aligns with research that notes that older adults often rely on formal sources of support due to a lack of available informal support. 15, 35, 42 …”