Abstract

There has been few research attempting to measure social support quantitatively in an army. Developing a reliable scale measuring social support will be very useful for future research as well as prevent accidents in an army. In the present study, after verbal protocol analysis, a questionnaire(24 items) for measuring social support's contents and social network was developed based on preceding studies. Responses from 285 soldiers were factor-analyzed using principal-axis(PAF) extraction procedure, followed by oblique rotation. Three factors with eigenvalues of great than 1 were finally extracted. Analysis of the item content of the factors indicated dimensions information support, emotional support, and instrumental support respectively. On the basis of factor loadings and item-total correlations, six items on each of the intended dimensions were retained(total 18 items). Cronbach alpha coefficients of each subscale ranged from .82 to .88, which showed satisfactory internal consistency. On the other hand, after verbal protocol analysis, social network of soldiers was twelve persons. The present study could work as a stepping stone for guiding the direction of further research.