Validation of the Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ): Preliminary study

The Social Support construct has great relevancy in regard to the explanatory hypotheses of vulnerability to stress. Smoking is a strategy employed by many smokers in order to cope with stress, and Social Support has shown its relevance also in the process of smoking cessation. Therefore its assessment is crucial in all these situations. We present the psychometric characteristics of a new questionnaire (Social Support Questionnaire, SSQ) for epidemiological studies that study in its quantitative and qualitative aspects the relationships of couple, family, friendship, search for support and loneliness. In an incidental sample of 200 people, 67% women, average age 30.16 years, three factors were obtained ( Friendship , Absence of Loneliness and Family and effort ) with a 36.38% of the explained variance, with a total internal consistency of 0.81, and 0.83, 0.81 and 0.57 respectively in each factor. With 140 people the test-retest reliability was 0.72, there were meaningful correlations with the scales California Mental Health Social Support (rr = 0.286) and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (rr = 0.560).