Description

The Social Provision Scale – Oluwatomiwo (SPS-O) is presented in the available material as a psychometric instrument designed to assess perceived social support received by individuals from their social environment.

The scale is intended to provide a structured assessment of the extent to which individuals feel that supportive social resources are available to them. This type of assessment can contribute to a broader understanding of social functioning and the role of perceived support in psychological and physical health.

Aim

The primary aim of the SPS-O is to provide a reliable and valid measure of the social support individuals perceive that they receive. According to the available source, the instrument may be used both in clinical practice and in research settings.

In clinical contexts, it may help identify patients’ support needs, while in research it may be used to examine relationships between social support and indicators of mental or physical health.

Main Areas of Assessment

The available file refers to several dimensions of social support, but it does not specify their exact number or official names.

In general, the assessment focuses on the degree to which individuals perceive that they have access to supportive social resources and assistance from people in their social environment.

The official version or manual of the SPS-O would be required to describe the specific subscales accurately.

Scoring

According to the available material, the SPS-O uses a 4-point Likert-type scale, with responses ranging from:

1 = Not at all
to
4 = Very much

depending on the degree to which individuals feel they receive the relevant form of support.

Scores are calculated by summing the individual item scores for each dimension of social support. Higher scores indicate higher levels of perceived social support.

The available source does not specify the total number of items, the complete possible score range, or whether reverse-scored items are included.

Psychometric Characteristics

According to the source, psychometric evaluation of the SPS-O includes:

Internal Consistency: assessment of the degree to which items within the scale measure related aspects of social support.

Test-Retest Reliability: examination of the stability of scores across repeated administrations.

Convergent Validity: evaluation of whether scores are appropriately associated with measures of related constructs.

Discriminant Validity: examination of whether the instrument is sufficiently distinct from measures of unrelated constructs.

Factor Analysis: used to investigate and confirm the structure of the instrument and its dimensions of social support.

The available file does not provide numerical reliability or validity coefficients, so specific psychometric values should not be assumed without further documentation.

Data Analysis and Use

SPS-O data may be analyzed at the level of overall perceived social support as well as across its individual dimensions.

Depending on the research design, appropriate statistical approaches may include descriptive statistics, group comparisons, correlational analysis, regression models, and factor-analytic techniques.

The instrument may be particularly useful for investigating associations between perceived social support and variables related to mental health, physical health, quality of life, and psychosocial functioning.

Applications

The SPS-O may be used in psychological, social, clinical, and health-related research, particularly in studies focusing on perceived social support.

Assessment of social support may help identify individuals or groups with limited perceived social resources and may contribute to the development of targeted support interventions.

According to the available source, the scale may also be used to study the relationship between social support and mental or physical health.

References

The available file identifies Oluwatomiwo et al. (2020) as a key study related to the development and validation of the SPS-O and its usefulness across different populations and settings. However, the source does not provide complete bibliographic details that would allow the reference to be reproduced reliably in standard APA format.

For academic use, the full bibliographic details of the original publication should therefore be verified before inclusion in a formal reference list.