Social Support Influence On Self Esteem

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RELATED LITERATURE:

Whether actual or perceived, social support reflects overall feelings that one is cared for, accepted and that in difficult times one will have others to turn to who will provide assistance and help (Sarason, Sarason and Pierce 1990; Davis, Morris and Kraus 1998). Clara et al. suggest that it is the perception of global social support that appears to provide a buffering effect that protects individuals from ‘succumbing to adversity’ (2003, p. 268). Such perceptions ‘appear to reflect a pervasive worldview, rooted perhaps in childhood experiences and attachment history’ while domain-specific social support is ‘more clearly the result of experiences with particular relationships and tend to influence only judgments that …show more content…

This is an intergroup rather than within-group process, the formation of a social identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). According to social identity theory people strive to maintain a positive self-image, or a high level of self-esteem. Their self-esteem is determined both by the value of their personal identity--that identity formed on the basis of reflected appraisal, social comparison, and identification--and their various social identities. Social identity is defined as "those aspects of an individual 's self-image that derive from the social categories to which he perceives himself as belonging" (Tajfel & Turner, 1986, p. …show more content…

2.Our second hypothesis was that second-year students perceive higher levels of parental support than do upper class students.
OBJECTIVES
Our study intended to achieve face, content and concurrent criterion validity. Face validity is the judgment evaluated by people in a scientific community of whether variables measure what they intend to in a study (Neuman 2007). We strove to achieve face validity by utilizing indicators that have been acknowledged by members of the scientific community and by members of the sociological community at our college as ones that appropriately measure social support. Content validity intends to capture the entire meaning of a question being studied by conceptualizing the question clearly, encompassing all of its aspects or indicators and using all areas of the definition when measuring the sample (Neuman 2007). To obtain content validity, our conceptualized definition of social support was clearly stated in our survey as tangible support, self-disclosure, intimacy, sense of belonging and affirmation (Neuman 2007; Hale et al.