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The intent of this chapter is to provide researchers with the background to make informed decisions when selecting measures of social support. Our premise is that these decisions should be informed by theories of how social relationships influence health and well-being. More generally, social support research should have a basis in theories about how social relationships influence our cognitions, emotions, behaviors, and biology.

Our approach is to present brief overviews of three important theoretical perspectives on social support research:(1) the stress and coping perspective,(2) the social constructionist perspective, and (3) the relationship perspective. The stress and coping perspective proposes that support contributes to health by protecting people from the adverse effects of stress. The social constructionist perspective proposes that support directly influences health by promoting self-esteem and self-regulation, regardless of the presence of stress. The relationship perspective predicts that the health effects of social support cannot be separated from relationship processes that often co-occur with support, such as companionship, intimacy, and low social conflict. Brief summaries of these perspectives are pre-