title: Measuring social support in patients with advanced medical illnesses: An analysis of the Duke-UNC Functional Social Support Questionnaire.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To date, no measure of social support has been developed specifically for either palliative care or oncology settings. The present study examined the psychometric properties of the Duke-University of North Carolina Functional Social Support Questionnaire (DUFSS) in order to (1) assess the adequacy of the scale in the context of severe medical illness and (2) evaluate whether a brief subset of items might generate roughly comparable utility.
  
  
  METHODS
  The 14-item DUFSS was administered to 1,362 individuals with advanced cancer or AIDS. Classical test theory (CTT) and item response theory (IRT) analyses were utilized to develop an abbreviated version of the DUFSS that maintained adequate reliability and validity and might increase the feasibility of its administration in a palliative care setting. The reliability and concurrent validity of the DUFSS-5 were evaluated in a separate validation sample of patients with advanced cancer.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Analyses generated a five-item version of the DUFSS (the DUFSS-5) that collapsed response levels into only three options, instead of five. Correlations between the DUFSS-5 and measures of depression, quality of life, and desire for hastened death, as well as regression models testing the main-effect and buffering models of social support, provided support for the utility of the DUFSS-5.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Both the DUFSS and the abbreviated DUFSS-5 appear to have adequate reliability and validity in this setting. Moreover, the DUFSS-5 represents a potentially important option for healthcare researchers, particularly for those working in palliative care settings where issues of patient burden are paramount. Such analyses are critical for advancing the development and refinement of psychosocial measures, but have often been neglected.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology,Fordham University,Bronx,New York.
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Saracino
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology,Fordham University,Bronx,New York.
authors.forename: Elissa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kolva
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology,Fordham University,Bronx,New York.
authors.forename: Barry
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rosenfeld
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center,New York,New York.
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Breitbart
mesh_terms: D000163:Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome / Q000523:psychology; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000523:psychology*; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012944:Social Support; D019452:Terminally Ill / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: Item response theory; Palliative care; Social support