A preliminary evaluation of the Supportive Other Experiences Questionnaire: integrating the perspectives of social support providers after traumatic injury

Social support is a protective factor against the development of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). However, examinations of the social support after trauma have relied primarily on the self-reports of trauma survivors to the exclusion of their support providers. A new measure, the Supportive Other Experiences Questionnaire (SOEQ) was adapted from a well-established behavioral coding schema of support behaviors to capture social support experiences from the support provider perspective. 513 Concerned Significant Others (CSOs) recruited on MTurk who had served as support providers to a traumatically injured romantic partner were recruited to respond to SOEQ candidate items and other relevant measures of psychopathology and relational factors. Factor analytic, correlational and regression analyses were conducted. Confirmatory factor analytic results of SOEQ candidate items provide evidence for three support types (i.e., informational, tangible, and emotional) and two support processes (i.e., frequency, difficulty), producing a final 11-item version of the SOEQ. Evidence of convergent and discriminant validity provide good psychometric support for the measure. Evidence of construct validity was derived from support for two hypotheses: (1) difficulty providing social support is negatively associated with CSO perceptions of trauma survivor recovery, (2) social support provision frequency is positively associated with relationship satisfaction. Though factor loadings for support types were significant, several were small, limiting interpretability. Cross-validation in a separate sample is needed. The final version of the SOEQ demonstrated promising psychometric properties, and can provide key information one the experiences of CSOs as social support providers for trauma survivors. •We adapted a measure of Social Support from the support provider perspective.•The measure had promising psychometric properties.•Difficulty providing support was associated with perceptions of trauma nonrecovery.•Social support frequency was positively associated with relationship satisfaction.