Exploring and Developing an Instrument for Online Social Support Construct

Abstract

In this study, a social support tool for online communities was looked into to examine how doctoral students connected, communicated, and supported one another. Thus, thirteen online social support items from previous research and diverse industries were gathered for this study. These items were then modified to be especially helpful to PhD candidates in the education sector. 100 randomly selected students from an online social support group made up of PhD students from public universities around Malaysia participated in this study after the items had undergone expert validation. Internal reliability was attained for both of the components that were produced using the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA).