Measuring social support in patients with advanced medical illnesses: An analysis of the Duke–UNC Functional Social Support Questionnaire

摘要

ObjectiveTo date, no measure of social support has been developed specifically for either palliative care or oncology settings. The present study examined the psychometric properties of the Duke–University of North Carolina Functional Social Support Questionnaire (DUFSS) in order to (1) assess the adequacy of the scale in the context of severe medical illness and (2) evaluate whether a brief subset of items might generate roughly comparable utility.