Social support and compliance: update.

This paper presents an update of a selective review and critique of the literature on social support as a factor in the enhancement of patient compliance with medical regimens, with hypertension and hypertension risk factors as a particular focus. Three problem areas in the social support literature are cited: inconsistent and/or low levels of specificity in using the social support variable, inconsistent and/or inadequate outcome measures and inattention as to whether independent variables are carried out as planned in an experiment. This paper presents several studies which provide examples of these problems and some solutions to them. It is suggested that social support research utilize compliance enhancement strategies both as a measure of social support behaviours and also to ensure greater compliance with experimental manipulations.