Psychometric properties of the Perceived Social Support Questionnaire and its relationship with the quality of life of nurses
Subject Areas :
1 - Department of Psychology, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Azad University of Central Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Keywords: Perceived social support, credibility, validity, factor analysis, quality of life,
Abstract :
The aim of this study was to investigate the factor validity and reliability of the Perceived Social Support Questionnaire and its relationship with the quality of life of nurses. This questionnaire was developed by Zemit et al. (2008). For this purpose, 355 male and female nurses were randomly selected from public hospitals in Tehran. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to evaluate the reliability of the questionnaire and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was used to determine its factor validity. Consistent with the results of Zamit et al.'s (2008) study, the present study showed that this questionnaire has acceptable internal consistency and Cronbach's alpha coefficients in its subscales are between 0.79 and 0.90. Also, the results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis confirm that the structure of the questionnaire has an acceptable fit with the data and all goodness indicators of the fit confirm the model. The results also showed that the components of friends, family and society have a positive and significant relationship with quality of life and its dimensions. Physical and mental health and quality of life in general had a positive and significant relationship with all dimensions of perceived social support (P <0.05). Therefore, this questionnaire can be a good tool to assess the perceived social support of nurses and ultimately the perceived social support has an impact on the quality of life of nurses.