Notes and Insights Social Support and Social Structure James s. House University of Michigan The burgeoning study of social support in relation to social stress and health would benefit from increased attention to issues of so- cial structure. Three aspects of social relationships, all often re- ferred to as social support, must be more clearly distinguished- (l) their existence or quantity (i.e., social integration), (2) their formal structure (i.e., social networks), and (3) their functional or behavioral content (i.e., the most precise meaning of "social sup- port")--and the causal relationships between the structure of so- cial relationships (social integration and networks) and their func- tional content (social support) must be more clearly understood. Research and theory are needed on the determinants of social in- tegration, networks, and support as well as their consequences for stress and health. Among potential determinants, macrosocial structures and processes particularly merit attention." 3~e study- of "social support," especially in relation to health, has emerged seemingly out of nowhere in the last decade. A search of the Social Science Citation Index for articles with the term "social support" in their titles revealed an almost geometric rate of growth in the late 1970s: an average of 2 such articles per year between 1972 and 1976, 7 in 1977, 10 in 1978, 21 in 1979, and 43 by 1981 (see House and Kahn, 1985; House, 1986). A more recent search revealed continuing, though more linear, growth in the early 1980s: 50 articles in 1982, 60 in 1983, 73 in 1984, and 110 in 1985. In many ways this is not a new area of research at all, but rather ° Preparation of this paper has been supported in part by Public Health Service grants (#1PO1AGO5561) from the National Institute of Aging and (#5T32MH16806 and 5P50MH38330) from the National Institute of Mental Health, and by a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. A previous version was presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, August 198% ! am indebted to Thomas Pettigrew and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. © 1987 by the Eastern Sociological Society. All rights reserved. 0884-8971/87/0201-0135 $1.50 Sociological Forum Volume 2 Number 1 135 Sociological Forum represents a rediscovery and redirection of old sociological and social science concerns with interpersonal relationships and their effects on health and well-being (cf. Cobb, 1976; Hall and Wellman, 1985). Unique to the current spate of interest in social support, however, has been a focus on the potential of social relationships to promote and maintain physical and mental health, and especially to buffer or ameliorate the potential deleterious effects of psychosocial stress on health. Evidence that social support can reduce morbidity and mortality, lessen exposure to psychosocial stress and perhaps other health hazards, and buffer the impact of stress on health is now available from diverse types of studies: laboratory experimental studies of animals as well as humans, cross-sectional and retrospective field studies of human pop- ulations, and growing numbers of longitudinal or prospective field stud- ies as well. Although the results of individual studies are usually open to alternative interpretations, the pattern of results across the full range of studies strongly suggests that what are variously termed social rela- tionships, social networks, and social support have important causal ef- fects on health, exposure to stress, and the relationship between stress and health (House, 1981a). This burgeoning literature has elicited many excellent reviews and assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of this evidence, which I will not attempt to replicate or even summarize here (see Berkman, 1985; Broadhead et al., 1983; Cohen and Wills, 1985; Cohen and Syme, 1985; and Kessler and McLeod, 1985, for some of the best and most recent examples of this genre and Israel and Rounds [forthcoming] for a review of reviews), Because of its origin in the health sciences and its concern with health as a dependent variable, the study of social support has not ben- efited as much as it could or should from the application of extant the- oretical and conceptual perspectives of psychology and especially so- ciology. The study of social support is an inherently social psychological problem. Thus, the present paper attempts to utilize a distinctly socio- logical variant or face of social psychology (i.e., House, 1977; 1981b)-- the study of social structure and personality--to identify and clarify some important gaps and paradoxes in the study of social support. Central to dealing with these gaps and paradoxes is increasing attention to the unique disciplinaIT concern of sociology--that is, social structure. The present focus on social structure in no way negates the need for more attention to the psychology of social support as well (cf. House, 1981a:90-94). Personality and social psychologists have emphasized that how much support a person actually receives may be as much or more a function of how well individuals generate and utilize supportive re- lationships as of how much support is available or provided by the en- vironment or social structure in which they are located (e.g., Heller, 1979). However, empirical attempts to explain social support effects in 136 Notes and Insights terms of personality have not been very successful (Wethington and Kessler, 1986). PsTchotogists have also been among those most atten- tive to the negative as well as the positive effects of social support--a point to which we return below. The present paper, however, empha- sizes issues which psychologists and epidenliologists have neglected-- the role of social structure in understanding the nature, sources, and generally positive effects of social relationships and supports. STRUCTURES AND SENTIMENTS OF SOCIAL SUPPORT One of the first things in the social support literature that strikes one, perhaps I should say that confounds or even astounds one, is that there is no consensus on the conceptualization and measurement of so- cial support. The term social support, and related terms such as social integration and social networks, are often used interchangeabty to refer to three distinct aspects of social relationships--their existence or quantity, their formal structure, and their functional content or the degree to which they involve flows of affect or emotional concern, in- strumental or tangible aid, information, and the like (Gottlieb, 1985; House and Kahn, 1985). When used in more careful and restricted ways, the term "social support" is most commonly used to refer to the last of these aspects of relationships--their functional, content. Similarly, "so- cial network" is most often and appropriately used to refer to the struc- tures existing among dyadic ties (e.g., reciprocity, multiptexity, fre- quency) or among a set of relationships (e.g., their density, homogeneity, or boundedness). Finally, terms like "social integration" or "isolation" usually refer to the mere existence or quantity of social relationships.' These conceptual distinctions seem to make a difference empiri- cally, with measures of social integration being associated with better physical and mental health regardless of exposure to stress, while mea- sures of social support (usually phrased as general emotional concern or perceived availability, of emotional or instrumental support in the face of stress) often buffer the impact of stress, especially on mental health, and only sometimes have main or additive effects on health as well (Kessler and McLeod, 1985; Cohen and Wills, 1985). The health effects of social network characteristics are limited, but some such mea- sures seem to have been important in certain situations (e.g., lower den- sity may facilitate adaptation to divorce or job loss). What is most interesting for present purposes, however, is that two of these concepts--social integration and social networks--are measures of social structures, while social support is most often mea- sured in terms of perceived psychological sentiments. Because very few" studies include measures of two, much tess all, of these aspects of social relationships, we do not presently understand the relationship between 137 Sociological Forum FIGURE 1. A Model for Studying Social Relationships, Networks, and Support in Relation to Each Other and to Stress and Health. I The domain of social wpport ! I ,,, , ,,,, | ! Social tupi~ort ! Social relationships ! I a. Existence I. Type (e.g., | ! b. Quantity I emotional, | | c. Type inlormationll} | b, Source II I I C. Quantity or quality ! I I 0 | ! Social network I ! ! a, Size | b. Density ! I c. Multiplexity I II ! d. Reciprocity | e. Durability II ! f, Intensity I ! g. Frequency | I h. Dispersion ! ! i. Homogeneity I ! ......... Source: House and Kahn, 1985. these structures and sentiments regarding social relationships, nor do we understand how and why each of them may affect levels of stress, health, or the relationship between stress and health. Figure 1 provides a simple model of the relationships among these three aspects of social relationships and of their relationships to stress and health. ~l]ae figure suggests that the existence of social relationships is a necessary precondition or cause of network structure and that both of these may affect sentiments of social support. For simplicity's sake, Figure 1 uses one set of arrows to represent how each of the domains or aspects