The effect of social support type on resilience

Abstract

Despite the importance of resilience, the ability to recover from negative events and adapt to difficult conditions, as well as the role that communication may play in people's ability to do so, limited relevant research exists on this topic in the communication field. Most previous research has focused primarily on emotional support, a single type of social support. Therefore, the present study explored the relationship among five types of social support (i.e., emotional, esteem support, network, tangible, informational) and resilience. To this end, the researchers obtained survey data from undergraduate students attending the University of Alabama. The present study conducted a multiple regression analysis and a moderated regression analysis to test the two research questions using SPSS, ultimately offering meaningful results indicating that social support influences resilience as well as how this relationship is affected by sex roles of the support receivers.