Abstract
The aim of this study is to explore does social support (emotional and instrumental) has a moderating effect on the relation between coping strategies – loss-oriented and restoration-oriented – and emotional distress. In this research participated 64 respondents who experienced a death of a spouse in the last 40 days. They were uniformed in terms of gender, with age ranging from 65 to 89. Moderators were measured on one-item scale, while predictors were measured with 22-item Inventory of Daily Widowed Life (IDWL; Caserta & Lund, 2007). Emotional distress was measured with The Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21, Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). Results indicated the following. When the predictor variable was loss orientation, and the moderator was emotional and instrumental support, significant main and interactive effects on emotional distress were registered. Namely, in conditions of low loss orientation, elderly who had higher social support had lower emotional distress than elderly who had lower social support. However, in conditions of high loss orientation, individuals achieved equal scores on the emotional distress scale regardless of the level of social support. When restoration orientation was the predictor, and emotional support was the moderator, both main and interactive effects were registered. Thus, in conditions of low restoration orientation, elderly with higher emotional support had a lower score on the emotional distress scale than those with lower support. In conditions of restoration orientation, regardless of the level of emotional support, elderly achieved approximately same values on the scale of emotional distress.
Keywords
Array
Array
Array
Array
References
Authors retain the copyright of the published papers and grant to the publisher the nonexclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of re-use, and to distribute it in all forms and media. The published articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA). It is allowed to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and remix, transform and build upon it for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given to the original
author(s), a link to the license is provided, it is indicated if changes were made and the new work is distributed under the same license as the original. Authors are permitted to deposit the author’s publisher’s version (PDF) of their work in an institutional repository, subject-based repository, author’s personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website at any time after publication, with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.