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Published on: November 19, 2015
Construct validity and factor structure of a Spanish-language Social Support Questionnaire during early pregnancy
Lauren E Friedman1, Ana Karen Manriquez Prado2, Gabriel Fidel Santos Malavé2
1Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA, lfriedm@hsph.harvard.edu.
Background:
The Social Support Questionnaire - Short Form (SSQ-6) is a widely used instrument that assesses availability and satisfaction of a person's social support. The present study aimed to evaluate the construct validity and factor structure of the Spanish language version of the SSQ-6 during early pregnancy.
Participants And Methods:
A total of 4,236 pregnant Peruvian women were interviewed at 10.3 ± 3.8 weeks of gestation. In-person interviewers were used to collect lifestyle, demographic, and social support characteristics. The construct validity and factorial structure of the SSQ-6 were assessed through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The internal consistency was evaluated using Cronbach's alpha.
Results:
The mean SSQ-6 score was 39.6 ± 6.8 and Cronbach's alpha was 0.83. EFA resulted in a three-factor solution that accounted for 60.6% of the variance. CFA results confirmed the three-factor structure and yielded measures indicating goodness of fit (comparative fit index of 0.9401) and accuracy (root mean square error of approximation of 0.0394).
Conclusion:
Although the SSQ-6 was originally developed as a two-factor model, and previous studies have supported this, in our study a three-factor model was found to be more appropriate. The SSQ-6 was found to have good construct validity and reliability for assessing social support.
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