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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Assessment of the abbreviated Duke Social Support Index in a cohort of older Australian women | | Author(s) | Jennifer R Powers, Brendan Goodger, Julie E Byles |
| Journal title | Australasian Journal on Ageing, vol 23.2, June 2004 |
| Publisher | Blackwell Publishing, June 2004 |
| Pages | pp 71-76 |
| Source | http://www.cota.org.au / http://www.blackwellpublishingasia.com |
| Keywords | Older women ; Over 70s ; Health [elderly] ; Screening ; Evaluation ; Australia. |
| Annotation | The acceptability, reliability and validity of the 11-item Duke Social Support Index (DSSI) is assessed with community-dwelling Australian women aged 70-75 who were randomly selected from the national Medicare database, with oversampling of rural and remote areas. The mailed survey included items about social support, medical outcomes, Study Short Form Health Survey (SF-36), health service use, recent life events and sociodemographics. All DSSI items were completed by 94% of the 12,939 participants. Internal reliability was reasonable for 10 of the 11 DSSI items and its factors, social interaction (four items) and satisfaction with social support (6 items). The factor structure was consistent for subgroups of women: urban/non-urban; English speaking or non-English speaking background; married/divorced. Summed scores were highly correlated with factor scores and showed good construct validity. Higher social support was associated with better physical and mental health, being Australian born, more educated and batter able to manage an income. Two of the 11 DSSI items provided an acceptable, brief and valid measure of social support for use in mailed surveys to community-dwelling older women. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-041215202 A |
| Classmark | BD: BBK: CC: 3V: 4C: 7YA |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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