Peer support telephone dyads for elderly women: the wrong intervention or the wrong research?

Reaction to the intervention paper by Heller et al. (1990) places their work into a larger framework of social support interventions to make explicit the assumptions underlying the project. It is suggested that the intervention was constrained by the experimental design of the evaluation research and overlooked important features in the process of relationship development among dyads. In developing interventions designed to impact personal relationships, it is recommended that community psychologists (a) consider the context in which personal relationships are formed, maintained, and terminated; (b) use the power of their scientific inquiry to create, strengthen, or legitimize new social roles for people who are disenfranchised; (c) promote the use and legitimacy of research methods that compliment rather than dictate the nature of interventions.