Verdery Ashton M, Campbell Colin
The Pennsylvania State University.
East Carolina University.
Soc Forces. 2019 Dec;98(2):725-752. Epub 2019 Feb 26.
Social networks of family and friends are key resources that individuals turn to in times of need. When family and friends can provide assistance, they constitute a form of social capital that individuals may draw on for social support. Although a large body of research has examined the use of social support in its own right and as a predictor or moderator of other outcomes, few studies have explored differentials in access to social support for the general population or how these access levels have changed over time. There are many open questions. Is access to social support broadly distributed in the population or does it differ by demographic subgroups? Have levels of access remained constant? We compare levels of access to social support through both family and friends across population subgroups and describe the changing contours of access to it in the general population. Using repeated cross-sectional measurements that we compile from nearly two decades of surveys conducted as part of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we expand on a literature that has, to date, focused almost exclusively on the use of social support as a predictor of other outcomes using non-representative data. This article presents, to our knowledge, the first nationally representative study of stratification and trends in access to social support for individuals in the United States.
家人和朋友的社交网络是个人在需要时求助的关键资源。当家人和朋友能够提供帮助时，他们就构成了一种社会资本形式，个人可以利用这种资本获得社会支持。尽管大量研究已经考察了社会支持本身的使用情况，以及它作为其他结果的预测因素或调节因素的情况，但很少有研究探讨普通人群在获得社会支持方面的差异，或者这些获得水平随时间的变化情况。有许多悬而未决的问题。获得社会支持的机会在人群中是广泛分布的，还是因人口亚群体而异？获得水平是否保持不变？我们比较了不同人群亚组通过家人和朋友获得社会支持的水平，并描述了普通人群中获得社会支持的变化情况。我们利用从近二十年作为收入与项目参与调查一部分进行的调查中汇编的重复横截面测量数据，扩展了迄今为止几乎完全集中于使用非代表性数据将社会支持作为其他结果预测因素的文献。据我们所知，本文首次对美国个人获得社会支持的分层和趋势进行了全国代表性研究。
