Effects of social support in the stressor-strain relationship: a Dutch sample.

Social support may be defined as the social ties an individual has, and which lead the subject to believe that he is cared for. The present study describes research on the hypothesis that social support protects the person against the noxious effects of job stress and will keep the strain and health effects low. A short review of relevant literature is given and 6 hypotheses about the role of support are tested; 3 about the interactive effects and 3 about the main effects. The study resembles the work of LaRocco, House and French, although there are some differences. Like these authors, a moderated regression technique was used on data from a sample of 1246 employees of 13 different industrial organizations. The analysis shows that social support buffers the impact of work-related stressors on psychological and behavioral strains but that there is no such a buffering effect on health strains. A very striking result was the strong buffering effect against employee's high blood pressure (SBP and DBP), of the supervisor giving support in the case of psychological problems.