Development of Perceived Social Support Scale

Pages: 1540-1544
Syed Najmah Jameel and Shawkat Ahmad Shah (Department of Psychology, University of Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir)

A Perceived social support scale was developed, that can be used to assess the perceived social support among orphans in the Asian cultural context, with special focus on the cultural context of Kashmir. Responses were sought from 336 orphans from 8 orphanages of Srinagar district on an 18 item scale formulated on basis of strong theoretical and research evidence. Exploratory factor analysis was carried out to check the factor structure and confirmatory factor analysis was carried out to confirm the same. The findings revealed a three-factor structure comprising of peer support, school environment and institutional environment dimensions. Cronbach’s alpha of the standardized items was found to be 0.84, which falls under the acceptable thresholds as proposed by various psychometricians.