Who Has Your Back?
Family, friends and that one person - where your support really comes from
The support that protects people in hard times is not the help they actually receive so much as the help they believe would be there if they asked. Researchers call it perceived support, and it comes from three places that rarely score the same: family, friends, and one particular person who matters more than the rest. Most people lean heavily on one of the three without quite noticing, which is fine until that one becomes unavailable.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
'Family' means whoever you count as family. 'Special person' can be a partner, a parent, a sibling, a friend or anyone else - whoever comes to mind first.
What it measures
How much support you believe you can count on from three sources, following the three subscales of the original measure: family, friends and a significant other. This is different from loneliness, which is how isolated you feel overall: a person can feel well supported by family and still lonely, or have few people and feel fully backed.
Based on: Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet & Farley, 1988)
Possible results
Family
The support you feel you can count on from family.
Friends
The support you feel you can count on from friends.
Special person
Whether one particular person is there for you.
Common questions
Is perceived support more important than actual help?
For wellbeing, often yes. In the original validation study of this scale, people who felt more support available reported markedly less depression and anxiety, regardless of how much help they had actually used recently. One likely reason is that help you did not ask for can feel like a sign you are not coping.
How is this different from loneliness?
Loneliness is a feeling about the gap between the connection you want and the connection you have. Perceived support is narrower: whether specific people would help if you needed it. They are related but separate - some people feel lonely in a supportive family, and some feel content with only one reliable person.
Does the special person have to be a partner?
No. The original scale deliberately left it open, and people name partners, parents, siblings, best friends or mentors. What matters is that one person stands out as reliably there for you. Single people often score as high on this bar as people in relationships.
Sources
- Zimet, G. D., Dahlem, N. W., Zimet, S. G., & Farley, G. K. (1988). The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Journal of Personality Assessment. doi:10.1207/s15327752jpa5201_2
- Zimet, G. D., Powell, S. S., Farley, G. K., Werkman, S., & Berkoff, K. A. (1990). Psychometric characteristics of the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Journal of Personality Assessment. doi:10.1080/00223891.1990.9674095
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording, adapted from the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, so scores are not comparable with its published norms. It measures support you believe is available, which mood colours: on a bad week everyone looks further away. What counts as family, and how openly people ask for help, varies across cultures. This is not a diagnosis; if you feel isolated and it weighs on you, a doctor or counsellor is a good place to start.