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Development of the Scale of Perceived Social Support in HIV (PSS-HIV)

Cortes, Aaron; Hunt, Nigel; McHale, Sue

Authors

Aaron Cortes

Nigel Hunt

Sue McHale



Abstract

Social support (SS) plays a key role for HIV/AIDS prevention and disease management. Numerous general and disease-specific SS instruments have been developed and perception of support has been increasingly considered, though no scales have been specifically developed to measure perceived social support (PSS) in HIV/AIDS. To help fill this gap a 12-item scale was developed. The study comprised 406 (HIV(+) and HIV(−)) participants from Chile and the UK. A principal component factor analysis yielded three factors explaining 77.0 % of the total variance: Belonging, Esteem and Self-development with Cronbach α of 0.759, 0.882 and 0.927 respectively and 0.893 on the full scale. The PSS-HIV is brief, easy-to-apply, available in English and Spanish and evaluates the perception of supportive social interactions. Further research is needed to corroborate its capacity to detect psycho–socio–immune interactions, its connection with Maslow’s hierarchy of need theory and to evaluate its properties for different health states.

Citation

Cortes, A., Hunt, N., & McHale, S. (2014). Development of the Scale of Perceived Social Support in HIV (PSS-HIV). AIDS and Behavior, 18(12), 2274-2284. doi:10.1007/s10461-014-0902-0

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 24, 2013
Online Publication Date Sep 23, 2014
Publication Date Sep 23, 2014
Deposit Date Sep 29, 2017
Print ISSN 1090-7165
Electronic ISSN 1573-3254
Publisher Humana Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 18
Issue 12
Pages 2274-2284
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-014-0902-0
Keywords Perceived social support; HIV/AIDS; Scale development; Biopsychosocial; Factor analysis
Public URL http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10461-014-0902-0
Publisher URL https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10461-014-0902-0
PMID 25245475