[A validation of the Social Provisions Scale: the SPS-10 items]

Abstract

The Social Provisions Scale-10 item (SPS-10) is a shortened version of the Social Provisions Scale (Cutrona and Russell, 1987) validated in French (Échelle de provisions sociales) by Caron (1996). The Social Provisions Scale (SPS) originally consisted of six subscales to measure the availability of social support: emotional support or attachment, social integration, reassurance of worth, tangible help, orientation and opportunity for nurturance. Four items allowed measuring of each subscales, two formulated positively and two negatively for a total of 24 items. The SPS-10 retains five subscales, opportunity for nurturance was excluded and it only keeps the positively worded items, two items per dimension of support. The article presents its validation on a representative sample of 2433 people of the general population of the southwest region of Montreal. It has a strong concurrent validity with the original scale of 24 items (SPS) (r = 0.930). All its items are highly correlated with total scores and its internal consistency is excellent. The alpha for the global scale is 0.880 and the alphas for the five subscales ranged from 0.528 to 0.690. Its construct validity is also preserved. The SPS-10 has an independence of its dimensions with moderate correlations between the subscales ranging between 0.469 and 0.632 and its five subscales are more strongly related to the support global score (r minimum = 0.755 p <0.001 and r maximum = 0.835), indicating that they are also indicators of the availability of social provisions. An exploratory factor analysis allows finding almost the same factors structure than the French version of SPS. The SPS-10 explains 14.1% of the variance in psychological distress and retains 95% of the predictive power of the SPS-24 items and all its subscales are negatively correlated with psychological distress. It also explains 25.4% of the variance in quality of life and its predictive power is equivalent to the SPS-24 items and all its subscales are positively correlated to QOL. The analyses suggest that the SPS-10 is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring the availability of social support with an administration time reduced by half. It is an excellent choice for epidemiological surveys.