Familial Social Support Scale for Breast Cancer Patients: Development and Validation

The article describes the development of the 38-item Familial Social Support Scale (FSSS) which measures social support of the family as perceived by the women breast cancer patients. To generate items for the scale, a series of steps including literature review, interviews, and focus group discussion were carried out. For the selection affinal items, judges' opinions were obtained and item total correlations were calculated. For item total correlation, 41-item Familial Social Support Scale was administered on a sample of 60 breast cancer patients (mean age: 43.21 years). The 38 items finally selected fell in the range of correlation coefficients of .53 to .89 (p<.000). The scale shows satisfactory alpha coefficient, split-half reliability. and content validity. The significantly negative value of the Pearson correlation coefficient indicated the discriminant validity of the scale. it was determined by investigating the relationship of familial social support with depression in breast cancer patients in a separate study with independent sample.