Research on mutual aid and social support: progress and future directions.

Signs of progress in the study of mutual aid and social support include a greater emphasis on the collection of empirical data to evaluate program effects and to comprehend relations between professional and informal sources of aid, as well as a clearer delineation of concepts and creative integration of practices associated with mutual aid. Several directions for future research on support interventions are addressed, including the nature and timing of outcome measures, analyses of the optimal fit of participants to different intervention formats, and the need for research designs that yield information about the necessary and cost-effective components of support interventions.