Perceptions of postmastectomy patients. Part II. Social support and attitudes towards mastectomy.

To measure the relationships among social support, attitudes toward mastectomy, and self-esteem in women postmastectomy, the Mastectomy Attitude Scale (MAS), the Norbeck Social Support Questionnaire (NSSQ), and Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale (RSE) were used. A factor analysis of the MAS yielded six factors that were used in regression analyses. Stepwise regression was used to identify variables that significantly contributed to women's self-esteem. Covariates in the analyses were age, years of education, marital status, and adjuvant chemotherapy. The women (n = 456) averaged 54 years in age, had slightly more than a high school education (mean = 13.0 years), and were predominately married (80%); almost half had adjuvant chemotherapy (45.6%). The overall regression model was significantly (df = 16,440; F = 15.12, p less than 0.0001) and accounted for 35.5% of the variance. Seven of the 16 variables were significant accounting for the following percentages of variance: sexuality, 21.1%; outlook, 5.8%, appearance satisfaction, 3.1%; emotions, 1.3%; college education, 1.2%; adjuvant chemotherapy, 0.6%; and age (60-69), 0.6%. Thus, women's attitudes toward mastectomy accounted for a greater proportion of the variance in their self-esteem than did social support and other demographic variables.