BioPsychoSocial Assessment Tools for the Elderly - Assessment Summary Sheet Test: Duke Social Support and Stress Scale (DUSOCS) Year: 1989 Domain: Social Assessment Tool Category: Social Support Variations/Translations: N/A Setting: Community Method of Delivery: Self-administered Description: Family members as well as non-family social ties play a role to mediate the link between social support, stress levels and health. The DUSOCS works to capture an individual’s perceptions of how supportive or stressful his or her relationships are. Stressful relationships are defined as those that cause problems or make lives more difficult for an individual. It also allows the identification of one’s most supportive and most stressful relationships. Scoring/Interpretation: The DUSOCS creates four scores: family support and stress, and non-family support and stress. Using a 3 point scale (“none”, “some”, “a lot”), the respondent rates his or her family members, non-famiy members and special supportive person as people who give personal support (12 items) and people who cause personal stress (12 items). Total support and stress are derived from the addition of family, non-family and special support scores and dividing by 22. Family support is derived by adding the raw score of the section on family members (and special supportive persons, if applicable) as personal support givers and dividing by 14 to give a 0-to-1 score. Similar process is done to derive the family stress score, the non-family stress score and non-family support scores; the latter non-family scores differ as divisions by 10 is done to obtain the 0-to-1 score. The higher the score, the more stressful or supportive the relationships are. Time to Administer: The information is unavailable in literature at the present time. Availability: Available in Parkerson, G.R. Jr. et. al. (1991) or through the Duke University website (see link below). Software: None Website: http://healthmeasures.mc.duke.edu/images/DUSOCS.pdf Quantitative/Qualitative: Quantitative Validity (Quantitative): Spearman correlation of ρ=0.43 was achieved between the DUSOCS family support score and Olson’s Family Strength measure. ρ=0.45 was derived between the DUSOCS family stress score and an independent measure of strains in marital and intrafamily relationships. Reliability (Quantitative): Two-week test-rest correlations of 0.76 were obtained for family support, 0.67 for nonfamily support, 0.68 for nonfamily stress, and 0.40 for family stress. Low test-retest reliability of 0.58 (family) and 0.27 (non-family) was obtained from a sample of 314 ambulatory patients (family support and nonfamily support received 0.73 and 0.50, respectively). Alpha coefficients of 0.53 to 0.7 were obtained. References: Parkerson, G.R. Jr., Michener, J.L., Wu, L.R., et. al. (1989). Associations among family support, family stress, and personal functional health status. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 42, 217-229. Parkerson, G.R. Jr., Michener, J.L., Wu, L.R., et. al. (1991). Validation of the Duke Social Support and Stress Scale. Family Medicine, 27, 680-693. Comments: N/A