ASSESSMENT OF THE SOCIAL SUPPORT NETWORKS OF PERSONS WHO HAVE MAJOR PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS: DEVELOPMENT AND INVESTIGATION OF AN APPLIED CLINICAL INSTRUMENT

This dissertation sought to develop and investigate a method for the assessment of the social support networks of persons who have major psychiatric problems and to explore the reliability and validity of the indicators derived from the assessment tool.;Methodology involved three phases. A pilot instrument was developed and was tested with ten aftercare clients. This tool was then revised based on the results of the pilot study.;A social network and support profile containing indicators of the structural, relationship and social support characteristics of a client's social network was developed during the second phase. These indicators were evaluated for their reliability. Forty subjects were interviewed at least once using the tool. A test-retest study was conducted involving 29 subjects. Concurrent measures of social integration and psychological impairment were also collected for all 40 subjects.;The third phase explored the usefulness of network indicators in predicting the social integration and psychological impairment of subjects. Correlational procedures were used to investigate the associations among network and support indicators and criterion variables.;Overall the indicators were found to have moderate reliability. The strongest coefficients were obtained for social network size and composition while weaker coefficients were obtained for social support and relationship indicators.;The cumulative effects of social network size, social network composition and the size and composition of a subject's support system explained a substantial portion of variance in social integration. Relationship indicators of frequency of interaction, perceived closeness to network members and duration of network relationships also proved to be highly predictive of social integration. Lastly, the only network indicators significantly related to psychological impairment were degree of perceived emotional closeness and the amount of emotional support received from network members. There was a moderate tendency for these indicators to decrease as psychological impairment increased.;This study illustrates that reliable and meaningful measures of social networks can be obtained from persons who have major psychiatric disorders. Implications for clinical assessment and program evaluation are discussed.