Social Support, Urban Adolescents

Models of Social Support

Social support refers to the feelings of being supported by a person or persons. Historically, there have been three major models of social support: provider, functional, and network. The provider model focuses on the person who gives the support (e.g., father, best friend, teacher). The functional model emphasizes the type, content, or quality of social support that the individual receives. Functional support is most commonly categorized into four types, emotional, instrumental, companionship, and appraisal (informational). In the provider model, assessment is either of who provides the most support or of support from a particular person averaged across different types of support. In this latter assessment, the types are assumed to be highly correlated within provider and allow for examination across and within providers to determine what types of support are most common by each provider. A common variation of the provider model is examining the structure of the social support network. This approach examines many aspects of the network, such as size, density, durability, complexity, and content of transactions or the extent to which network members are linked together.

Adolescent Social Support Systems

The majority of social support research has focused on adults or young children. Since adolescence is a time of many physical, emotional, cognitive, and social changes that may increase the number and magnitude of stressors in the lives of adolescents, social support has frequently been viewed as an important protective factor that buffers the detrimental effects of the stressors they encounter. Researchers studying social support during adolescence have identified several patterns in their social support systems. These studies suggest that the type and amount of support youth receive from different providers change as they enter and move through adolescence. For example, parents and peers appear to be critical providers of social support during both childhood and adolescence. Mothers are the most frequently cited providers of social support, with emotional support being the most commonly provided type. Peers, especially of the same sex, are consistently rated high by youth, while fathers and siblings fluctuate in their order of salience (Weigel, Devereux, Leigh, & Ballard-Reisch, 1998). As youth age, however, parents become less important providers of companionship and intimacy than peers (Gottlieb, 1991). Still, while peers make up a growing portion of an adolescent's social network, they do not completely replace family ties (Hunter & Youniss, 1982). Rather, social support providers tend to “specialize” in the provision of particular types of support, such that parents offer more emotional and instrumental aid whereas friends provide companionship. Other adults, such as teachers, can also serve as important providers of social support. However, the inferences made about adolescent social support systems have been from studies that lack longitudinal methods, making most findings speculative for understanding social support changes over time. The lack of research on the changes in support over the course of adolescence implies that there is more to learn about this crucial developmental period.

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