Evaluation of the Personal Resource Questionnaire: a social support measure

The purpose of this study was to further the psychometric evaluation of the Personal Resource Questionnaire (PRQ). The PRQ was developed to measure social support as a multidimensional construct. The PRQ is a two part measure of social support. Part 1 consists of life situations in which one might be expected to need some assistance. It provides descriptive information about the person's resources, whether or not they have experienced the situation in the past 6 months, and their satisfaction with these resources. Part 2 contains a 25-item Likert scale that measures the respondent's level of perceived social support. The questionnaire can be self-administered, requires approximately 10 minutes to complete, and is easily scored for use with various statistical techniques. Based on data generated by the author and on three additional data sets provided by collaborating researchers, psychometric properties of the PRQ were investigated. There was sound evidence to rule out the explanation that the respondent's answers on the PRQ reflect a reporting simply of socially desirable answers. There were no significant differences between the scores for women and the scores for men on either Part 1 or Part 2 of the PRQ. Evidence was provided to substantiate criterion-related validity. Part 2 of the PRQ was predictive of dyadic consensus. Likewise, initial validation of construct validity was evident. Part 2 of the PRQ is correlated with mental health indicators. Yet, the analyses indicate that there is reason to believe that the PRQ is not simply another way of measuring the construct of depression and anxiety. Consistently strong estimates of reliability, determined by the use of Cronbach's alpha, were obtained indicating a high level of internal consistency for the PRQ-Part 2. This report of the early psychometric evaluation of the PRQ can provide researchers with information which can guide their use of this social support measure. There are now some established base line profiles of responses for comparisons. The validity and reliability of the PRQ are sufficiently established so as to permit the continued use of the tool with some level of confidence in interpreting the results.