title: Development of the scale of perceived social support in HIV (PSS-HIV).
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.
authors.affiliation: Seccion de Inmunologia, VIH y Alergias, Hospital Clinico Universidad de Chile, Independencia, Santos Dumont 999, 5to piso Sector E, Santiago, Chile, aacortes@hcuch.cl.
authors.forename: Aaron
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cortes
authors.forename: Nigel
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hunt
authors.forename: Sue
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: McHale
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002677:Chile / Q000453:epidemiology; D003863:Depression / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055118:Medication Adherence / Q000523:psychology*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012649:Self Concept; D012934:Social Isolation / Q000523:psychology*; D012938:Social Perception; D012944:Social Support; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000453:epidemiology