Exploring Actual Social Support Using the Social Convoy Model to Assess the Impact on Depression in Adolescents

The current study set out to better understand the differences between availability of support and received support and explore the relation between social support and depression in late adolescents. One hundred and forty participants were recruited from a northwest suburb high school and a college from the eastern central part of Illinois. A social network was formed for each participant using a mapping technique from the Social Convoy Model. The received support measure, the UCLA Social Support Inventory, was used to assess the amount of received support participants identified from their social network. Participants completed the Late Adolescent Social Support Inventory to measure availability of support and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale Revised to measure depression. The correlation between the CESD-R and the LASSI in both student samples were statistically significant; however other subscales for social network sizes and received subscales were inconsistently related to depression. A two (type of received support) by three (intimacy level) by two (sample; high school or college) repeated measure ANOVA was conducted on total received support and indicated significant main effects for level of intimacy and type of received support; as well as a significant 3-way interaction. Results from multiple stepwise regression analysis indicate that the LASSI was the best predictor of depression accounting for 29% of the high school variance and 21% of the college variance