Apoyo social en adultos mexicanos: validación de una escala

Social support is defined as the availability of people on whom someone can rely on, people who let an individual know that he is valued and loved. The aim of this research was to elaborate a scale to assess the social support in adult Mexican people. In the first stage 200 adults (Mage = 25, SD = 8.93) answered and instrument using the technique of the natural semantic networks to obtain the psychological meaning of social support. In a second stage, using the results from the first one, a Likert instrument with six answer options was elaborated. In that part 350 participants collaborated (Mage = 33, SD = 9.38). In both stages the samples were integrated by Mexico City and Metropolitan Area residents. Result of the psychometric analysis performed (skew, item-total correlation, Student t test for extreme groups, factorial analysis by principal components with oblique rotation and Cronbach's alpha), the scale became integrated for 26 items distributed in 4 factors: emotional (α = .90), fellowship (α = .75), validation (α = .82) and practical/instrumental (α = .80). The explained variance was of 56.33% with a global reliability index of .937. It was obtained a valid and reliable scale, culturally relevant to assess the social support in Mexican population.