Translation and Initial Validation of the Chinese (Cantonese) Brief 2-Way Social Support Scale for Use in People with Chronic Stroke

Abstract

Background. Social support is important for stroke rehabilitation. Conventionally, social support is evaluated from the level of support received. However, the bidirectional support hypothesis postulated that self-perceived social support is optimized if individuals provide and receive social support in a balanced manner. The Brief 2-Way Social Support Scale (Brief 2-Way SSS) is a social support instrument measuring the reciprocity of receiving and giving emotional and instrumental social support. Objective. (1) To translate and culturally adapt the English version of the Brief 2-Way SSS into Chinese (Cantonese) (Brief 2-Way SSS-C), (2) to report the results of validation of the Brief 2-Way SSS-C, and (3) to investigate the level of social support in people with stroke in Hong Kong. Methods. The Brief 2-Way SSS-C was produced following the standard forward-backward translation model. People with stroke ( n = 109 ) and age-matched controls ( n = 53 ) were recruited through a university-affiliated neurorehabilitation laboratory. Results. The Brief 2-Way SSS-C demonstrated excellent content validity, acceptable to good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.74–0.88), and good test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.76–0.81). There were no ceiling or floor effects, and the MDC95 across all subscales was 4. The Brief 2-Way SSS-C subscales had significant correlations with various health-related outcome measures. People with stroke had a lower level of social support than the age-matched healthy controls. Conclusions. The Brief 2-Way SSS-C is a culturally relevant, reliable, and valid outcome measure for the level of social support in community-dwelling people with stroke.

Assessing the level of perceived social support among community-dwelling stroke survivors using the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support

“…The total score ranges from 0 to 60, with higher scores indicating higher levels of giving or receiving social support. The subscales of the Brief 2-Way SSS-C have demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.74-0.88) and good test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] = 0.76-0.81) in our previous study using people with chronic stroke 28 .…”

“…It appraises four principal dimensions: giving emotional support, giving instrumental support, receiving emotional support, and receiving instrumental support. Each item (e.g., “There is someone in my life I can get emotional support form”)is rated on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 5 (always) 28 . The total score ranges from 0 to 60, with higher scores indicating higher levels of giving or receiving social support.…”

“…The Chinese version of the brief 2-way social support scale (Brief 2-Way SSS-C). The Brief 2-Way SSS-C is a 12-item scale that evaluates the reciprocity of emotional and instrumental social support 28 . It appraises four principal dimensions: giving emotional support, giving instrumental support, receiving emotional support, and receiving instrumental support.…”

Russian version of BRIEF2 Teacher Forms: validation study in typically developing children aged 5 to 7 years old

“…BRIEF2 is widely used worldwide in clinical, psychoeducational, and research settings (Jiménez and Lucas-Molina, 2019;Robertson et al, 2020;Cumming et al, 2023) and has been successfully validated in several languages (Muñoz and Filippetti, 2021;Liu et al, 2022;Parhoon et al, 2022;Moura et al, 2023). Many of the existing studies have mainly been conducted on samples from North America (Jacobson et al, 2020) and Europe.…”

“…Many of the existing studies have mainly been conducted on samples from North America (Jacobson et al, 2020) and Europe. However, several studies have validated BRIEF2 as also applicable to non-Western populations: China (Liu et al, 2022), Iran (Parhoon et al, 2022), Chile (Muñoz and Filippetti, 2021), the Dominican Republic (Jiménez and Lucas-Molina, 2019).…”