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This paper aims to examine the strength characteristics of a stressful event (i.e. novelty, disruption, and criticality) as factors that drive people’s social media use for seeking different types of supportive resources (i.e. emotional, appraisal, informational, and instrumental support) to facilitate emotion-focused and problem-focused coping. We further assess the impact of different types of social support obtained via social media use on people’s coping effectiveness.

Our study uses an online survey collecting data at two points in time from 291 social media users during the COVID-19 pandemic. Structural equation modeling was used for data analysis.

Empirical results reveal the usefulness and limitations of social media use as a coping mechanism. All three event strength characteristics influence people’s social media use for both emotion-focused and problem-focused coping. Event novelty motivates people’s pursuit of informational support on social media, event disruption drives social media use for seeking all four types of support, and event criticality motivates social media use for seeking emotional and informational support. However, only emotion-focused resources – emotional support and appraisal support – are found to significantly affect people’s coping effectiveness.

Our study contributes to a better understanding of the role played by social media when people cope with a stressful event. Applying the three characteristics of event strength allows us to identify people’s need for different supportive resources depending on how they perceive the event. Our analysis of the main and mediating effects of the four types of social support shows that not all types of social support can significantly enhance users’ coping effectiveness.

We grounded this study in the Too-Much-of-a-Good-Thing (TMGT) meta-theoretical framework to disentangle the costs and benefits associated with workplace friendship in a military setting.

We collected data cross-sectionally through self-reports from 287 employees from the Romanian Air Force.

The number of friends had an inverted U-shaped association with perceived social support. Our results show that as the number of friends increases from 9 to 10, so does the social support. However, as the number of friends further increases above 10, social support tends to decrease rather than increase. Furthermore, we found that social support and all dimensions of mental well-being (emotional, social and psychological well-being) were positively associated. Moreover, social support mediated the relationship between the number of friends and the three dimensions of mental well-being.

Our findings can help human resources policies in military organizations foster an organizational climate that cultivates friendship ties between employees, which is crucial for their social support and overall mental well-being.

This work provides additional information about the specific mechanisms through which the effects of workplace friendships on mental well-being occur.

This study develops a structural model to examine the relationships among subjective perception of health, subjective perception of economic and social support, the perceived freedom in leisure, leisure satisfaction, and the well-being of elders. The subject of this study is the elderly who participated in leisure activities at Evergreen Academy in Kaohsiung City. Convenience sampling and quota sampling are adopted. 1,200 self-administered questionnaires are distributed, and 535 are valid, with a response rate of 45%. The results of this study show that subjective perception of health will positively affect perceived freedom in leisure; subjective perception of economics will positively affect perceived freedom in leisure and well-being; social support will positively affect perceived freedom in leisure, leisure satisfaction, and well-being; perceived freedom in leisure will positively affect leisure satisfaction and well-being; leisure satisfaction will positively affect well-being. There are significant differences in the subjective perception of economic and social support between male and female elders. There are significant differences in the subjective perception of economic, leisure satisfaction, and well-being among those with different education levels.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between individual-level psychological resources and team resilience in the context of expatriate project management teams. It seeks to understand how personal psychological resources contribute to team resilience and explore the dynamic evolution mechanism of team resilience. The goal is to enhance team resilience among expatriates in a BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible) world, where organizations face volatile and uncertain conditions.

An online survey was applied for data collection, and 315 valid samples from Chinese expatriates in international construction projects were utilized for data analysis. A structural equation model (SEM) examines the relationships between personal psychological resources and team resilience. The study identifies five psychological factors influencing team resilience: Employee Resilience, Cross-cultural Adjustment, Self-efficacy, Social Support, and Team Climate. The hypothesized relationships are validated through the SEM analysis. Additionally, a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) is constructed to explore the dynamic mechanism of team resilience formation based on the results of the SEM.

The SEM analysis confirms that employee resilience, cross-cultural adjustment, and team climate positively impact team resilience. Social support and self-efficacy also have positive effects on team climate. Moreover, team climate is found to fully mediate the relationship between self-efficacy and team resilience, as well as between social support and team resilience. The FCM model provides further insights into the dynamic evolution of team resilience, highlighting the varying impact effects of antecedents during the team resilience development process and the effectiveness of different combinations of intervention strategies.

This study contributes to understanding team resilience by identifying the psychological factors influencing team resilience in expatriate project management teams. The findings emphasize the importance of social support and team climate in promoting team resilience. Interventions targeting team climate are found to facilitate the rapid development of team resilience. In contrast, interventions for social support are necessary for sustainable, long-term high levels of team resilience. Based on the dynamic simulation results, strategies for cultivating team resilience through external intervention and internal adjustment are proposed, focusing on social support and team climate. Implementing these strategies can enhance project management team resilience and improve the core competitiveness of contractors in the BANI era.

Women’s reproductive circumstances and choices have consequences for their experiences of social connectedness, inclusion and support across the life-course. Australia is a pronatalist country and women’s social identity remains strongly linked to motherhood. Yet the number of women foregoing motherhood is increasing. Despite this, women without children are perceived as failing to achieve womanhood as expected by pronatalist ideologies that assume all women are or will be mothers. Defying socially determined norms of motherhood exposes women without children to negative stereotyping and stigma, which has consequences for their social connectedness, inclusion and support. This chapter examines theories of social connectedness, inclusion and support, drawing on Australian empirical data to explore how women without children experience social connectedness, inclusion and support in a pronatalist society within their daily lives.

Job loss and long-term unemployment can have pervasive negative impacts on well-being. At its most extreme, unemployment is accompanied by feelings of shame, humiliation, insecurity, and worthlessness, as well as damage to cherished identities and narratives of self. Scholars have investigated how the unemployed attempt to repair these damaged identities, but little is known about how network members participate in the identity reconstruction process. Social support has been shown to ameliorate the negative psychological effects of unemployment, but studies have also found that the unemployed are reluctant to ask for assistance and often perceive network members as a source of stress rather than as a source of support. To understand why social support can be experienced both positively and negatively by the unemployed, we draw upon 84 in-depth qualitative interviews with men and women who experienced unemployment during the extended economic downturn associated with the Great Recession. We find that social support ameliorates unemployment when it bolsters identities important to recipients, and exacerbates unemployment when it undermines such identities. We also show how the unemployed respond to identity-threatening support: by avoiding it, rejecting it, or reframing it as reciprocity. Our analysis contributes new insights into the relationship between social support and identities, as well as a deeper understanding of the noneconomic costs of the slow economic recovery following the Great Recession.

This chapter examines the associations between gender, social support, and health outcomes for individuals living with HIV disease. We include social integration and social isolation as structural measures of social support as well as perceived social support and social conflict as functional measures of social support. We include both mental health and physical health outcomes, which are too often studied in isolation of each other.

Data are from the Coping with HIV/AIDS in the Southeast (CHASE) study; this study reports on baseline data from 611 participants collected from 2001 to 2002. We first examined differences by gender and race, and then used blocked linear regression to determine the additive effects of the social support variables on both mental and physical health outcomes while controlling for potential confounders.

There were notable differences in the significance and strength of social support variables in health outcome models for men and women. Unlike men, social conflict was the strongest predictor of greater psychological distress and poorer physical health-related quality of life among women.

While the results from this study contribute to a greater understanding of gender differences in the relationships between social support and health outcomes, the data used for this study are limited to those living with HIV/AIDS in the Southeast.

Our findings suggest that social conflict may be more detrimental for the health of women than men.

This research documents the responsibilities and stresses of people with homeless relatives. Health and housing problems create a variety of challenges and sometimes burdens within families which are particularly stressful for family caregivers who are actively involved with helping homeless adults.

Our study and data examine stress proliferation and stress buffering among people with homeless relatives using quantitative data from 118 interviews, mostly with parents and siblings of homeless adults.

Quantitative data from 118 interviews, largely from parents and siblings of homeless adults, show that people who spend more time or money helping homeless relatives experience higher levels of stress. Stress levels are also higher among those who help a homeless relative with activities of daily living and those who work to prevent harm that involves a homeless relative. Stress derived from efforts to prevent harm is associated with stronger social support to people with homeless relatives.

Social and health service providers can provide helpful social support for both homeless people and for people with homeless relatives, particularly in circumstances where harm reduction is required.

The purpose of this paper is to understand demographic group (race, first-generation college graduate, gender, age) differences among perceived family and faculty social and family financial support within the US graduate school admissions pipeline in the social sciences.

Using data from a cross-sectional convenience sample survey (N = 99), this paper looks at ordinal social support variables (faculty member support, family social support and family financial support) by demographic groups. This paper uses a Mann–Whitney U test to compare first-generation status, race and gender and a Kruskal–Wallis H test to compare age groups.

This paper finds that applicants over 27 years old had significantly less faculty support in the graduate admissions pipeline compared to other age groups; differences in faculty support across race were marginally significant (p = 0.057). Regarding family social support, this paper finds first-generation applicants, male applicants and applicants over 27 years old report lower levels of support. Finally, this paper finds first-generation applicants and applicants over 27 years old report lower levels of familial financial support.

Previous literature on graduate admissions – published in this journal (Pieper and Krsmanovic, 2022) and others – does not consider experiences up to and before applicants hit the “submit” button on graduate applicants, which the authors term the graduate admissions pipeline. Instead, most previous literatures focus on faculty committees and validity of required application materials. Thus, this study begins to answer Posselt and Grodsky’s (2017) call to develop an understanding of applicant experiences and support within the graduate admissions pipeline.

This study aims to explore how social support has reshaped the care of older adults living alone in northeast Thailand during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study used a qualitative method using a narrative gerontological perspective with a descriptive design. Purposive sampling was conducted from 20 in-depth narrative interviews between November 2021 and February 2022 in Maha Sarakham province, northeast Thailand. Data transcriptions were performed using a narrative analytical process.

The in-depth narrative interviews indicated that older adults living alone during the coronavirus pandemic valued a comfortable life, a sense of place, favourable living arrangements, self-reliance, life goals and meaningful life. The gerontological analysis showed that social support for older adults living alone included a social safety net, networking, supporting needs, physical care and mental health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first qualitative narrative gerontological study to explore how social support reshaped the care of older adults living alone during the COVID-19 pandemic in northeast Thailand.