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The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences logoLink to The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences
. 2021 Dec 17;76(Suppl 3):S238–S250. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbab091

Resilience and Social Support-Giving Scales: Conceptual and Empirical Validation

Louise Hawkley 1,✉, Kristin Wroblewski 2, Kathleen A Cagney 1,2, Linda J Waite 1,2
Editor: Merril Silverstein
PMCID: PMC8678431  PMID: 34918150

Abstract

Objectives

This report introduces National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) data users to 2 new measures—one that assesses older adults’ resilience, defined as personal attributes that indicate an adaptive reserve that can be drawn on during adversity, and a second that expands on existing measures of social support received from others to also assess social support given to close others.

Method

Data from 4,604 NSHAP respondents born 1920–1965 were used to conduct psychometric analyses and validation of our measures of resilience and social support-giving.

Results

Scale reliabilities were acceptable for the 4-item resilience scale, and the 2-item scales for family support-giving and friend support-giving. The 2 spousal support-giving items did not cohere well as a single scale. The resilience scale exhibited significant correlations with criterion validation variables, even after adjusting for correlated personality traits. The support-giving scales, and the spousal support-giving items, also exhibited significant correlations with criteria, and with the resilience scale, even after adjusting for social support receipt. Scale means exhibited demographic differences.

Discussion

The resilience and social support-giving measures have acceptable psychometric characteristics (with the exception of spousal support-giving), convergent validity, and predictive utility net of related variables. NSHAP data users are offered several suggestions (key points) in the use of these measures in future research.

Keywords: Mental health, Personality, Physical health, Recovery, Stress

Older adults are often incorrectly considered a vulnerable population because they are at increased risk of life-altering changes, including social losses (e.g., widowhood), disability and frailty, cognitive decline, and development of chronic health conditions. However, they also bring with them a lifetime of experience that may have included the development of a robust network of social support, a repertoire of effective coping skills, and character strengths that render the challenges of older age less damaging for health and well-being. Indeed, mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic has been less adversely affected in older than in younger adults, in part through older adults’ unique deployment of social support and coping strategies (Minahan et al., 2021). Yet the strengths and resources that older adults bring to bear during life’s challenges are only rarely measured in large-scale studies of nationally representative samples of older adults. It was our goal to shift from a deficit-focused approach to aging and introduce two short-form measures of potentially health-protective factors suitable for administration in large national surveys and to test their validity and utility in the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), beginning in 2015. The first was a measure of resilience, defined as the capacity to adapt in the face of adversity (MacLeod et al., 2016). The second was a measure of respondents’ provision of social support to others (i.e., support-giving). From the outset, NSHAP has obtained data about respondents’ emotional support from others. However, providing support to others is at least as important to older adults’ sense of autonomy and self-worth (Krause & Shaw, 2000), characteristics that contribute to resilience, as well as their health and mortality (Brown et al., 2003; Whillans et al., 2016). For survey purposes, respondents are asked questions that measure their perceptions of the extent to which they believe they exhibit each of the behaviors used to index resilience and social support-giving, not whether they actually can or do behave in these ways. In the current study, we undertake a psychometric analysis and validation of our measures of resilience and social support-giving by examining their measurement properties and their associations with select criterion variables.

Background

Resilience

Resilience is generally defined as the capacity to withstand, bounce back from, and even thrive when confronted with challenging circumstances and adversity (Bonanno, 2004; Infurna & Luthar, 2018; Luthar et al. 2000; Masten, 2011; Rutter, 1985, 2000). Factors that protect against the adverse effects of risks have been grouped into three broad categories: individual attributes, protective social relationships, and external support systems (Ong et al., 2009). Here, we focus on individual attributes that constitute a resilient personality (Ong et al., 2009). From this perspective, resilience does not presuppose exposure to adversity. Rather, resilience refers to those characteristics that index an adaptive reserve that facilitates responding dynamically to adverse circumstances, what we think of as grace under pressure. By comparing individuals who fared well and poorly after exposure to a significant stressor, researchers have identified self-esteem, self-efficacy, problem-solving skills, optimism, purpose, and mastery as character strengths of resilient individuals (Wagnild & Young, 1993). The Resilience Scale developed by Wagnild and Young (1993), for instance, consists of 25 items that assess equanimity, perseverance, self-reliance, meaningfulness, and existential aloneness. Example items are “I usually take things in stride,” “When I make plans I follow through with them,” “I feel that I can handle many things at a time,” “My life has meaning,” and “It’s okay if there are people who don’t like me.” The Simplified Resilience Score (Manning et al., 2016) was derived for the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) by drawing items most closely associated with the Wagnild and Young Resilience Scale (1993). The resulting 12-item scale assesses perceived constraints on resilience using items that correspond to mastery and self-esteem, deemed essential psychological resources for coping (e.g., “I often feel helpless in dealing with the problems of life,” “I can do just about anything I set my mind to”) (Pearlin & Schooler, 1978). Other similar measures of resilience include the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (Connor & Davidson, 2003), the Ego Resiliency Scale (Block & Kremen, 1996), and the Brief Resilience Scale (Smith et al., 2008).

The development of earlier resilience scales included tests of their convergent validity. Convergent validity of the 25-item Resilience Scale (Wagnild & Young, 1993) was evident in high correlations of resilience with conceptually related variables such as life satisfaction (r = .30) and depressive symptoms (r = −.37). Some attention has been paid to the “Big Five” personality traits (i.e., openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) in validating the resilience construct. In a meta-analysis of studies examining these relationships in university students, sizeable correlations were found between resilience and each of the five traits (Oshio et al., 2018); the largest associations were with neuroticism (r = −.46), extraversion (r = .42), and conscientiousness (r = .42). In addition, resilience measures possess discriminant validity distinguishing them from personality measures. For instance, in a study of medical students, resilience measured using the Resilience Scale (Wagnild & Young, 1993) partially mediated the association between personality traits and anxiety (Shi et al., 2015). Evidence like this indicates that measures of resilience are not redundant with personality traits but have unique predictive utility.

No matter how it is measured, the concept of resilience has gained traction in the study of older adult health. Resilience has been associated with reduced depressive symptomatology, better quality of life, later onset of physical disability, and lower mortality risk (MacLeod et al., 2016; Yang & Wen, 2015), among other beneficial outcomes. The assumption underlying our study is that resilience is manifest in behaviors and attitudes that help to explain its positive effects. Among the behaviors shown to characterize resilient individuals are their effective and flexible moderation of positive and negative emotions, proactive versus passive coping, and maintenance of an optimal network of supportive others (Gaffey et al., 2016; Pearman et al., 2021). We extend this work by examining whether resilience is related to support-giving, the second potential health-protective factor introduced in NSHAP.

Social Support-Giving

The benefits of believing that social support is available have been well documented, and include protection of well-being (Thomas, 2010), mental health (Prati & Pietrantoni, 2010; Thoits, 2011), cognitive functioning (Kelly et al., 2017), physical health (Nicklett et al. , 2013), and even mortality (Berkman & Glass, 2000; Shor et al., 2013). Moreover, as noted above, social support is a component of resilience that improves people’s ability to manage significant life events (Ong et al., 2009; Thoits, 2011; Wagnild, 2003). The effects of actually receiving support are more complex and may depend on the type of support received and gender of the recipient, among other factors (Konrath & Brown, 2013).

In contrast to the rich literature on social support receipt, the study of social support-giving is less developed, and most of this research has focused on the costs to the care provider of providing support to others (Sallim et al., 2015). The costs of giving support to others are most evident when support-givers are overburdened with others’ needs and when their relationships with support recipients lack reciprocity (Konrath & Brown, 2013). Yet the benefits of giving support are increasingly appreciated, and like social support receipt may also enhance personal resilience. This conjecture stems in part from the recognition that care provision is another way that social bonds are formed and strengthened (Inagaki & Orehek, 2017), beginning with care for offspring and extending to care for friends, a spouse, and other family members, types of protective social relationships that may contribute to resilience. A care provider may feel rewarded by the experience, having helped to reduce the hardship and/or enhance the quality of the life of someone unable to do so themselves. Indeed, the so-called “helper’s high” is associated with the activation of reward circuitry in the brain that reinforces giving help to others (Inagaki & Orehek, 2017), and ensures that such behaviors persist and further strengthen social bonds. Strong social bonds, in turn, expand the range of resources individuals can rely on to help them bounce back from difficult experiences.

As noted earlier, perceptions, and not behaviors, are assessed in survey measures of social support-giving (and social support receipt). In a survey context, giving support has been shown to offer other benefits to the self, such as improving physical and mental health (House et al., 1988; Nurullah, 2012), enhancing self-esteem (Krause & Shaw, 2000), reducing blood pressure (Whillans et al., 2016), as well as increasing receipt of social support and engaging in proactive coping strategies (Nurullah, 2012). Other research shows that doing for others generates a sense of purpose and meaning in life, both of which contribute to resilience (Southwick et al., 2005).

Social support receipt and support-giving are only moderately correlated (Jensen et al., 2013), and they have been shown to contribute independently to health and well-being. For instance, even in the absence of emotional support from a spouse, giving emotional support to a spouse was associated with reduced mortality risk in a study of older adult couples (Brown et al., 2003). Social support-giving in a caregiver/care recipient context (i.e., “Does caregiver ask you for advice or talk over his/her problems with you?”) protected against care recipient depression independently of the protective effect of receiving adequate emotional support (Wolff & Agree, 2004). Support reciprocity may also play a role in the benefits of giving support. In married couples, receiving support was associated with worse negative mood on days when support was not given to the partner, but improved relationship closeness on days when support was both given and received (Gleason et al., 2008). Finally, the giving and receiving of support in friend, family, and spousal relationships were independently associated with greater well-being, whereas under-benefiting (giving more support than is received), relative to a balance of giving and receiving support, was associated with poorer well-being (Wang & Gruenwald, 2019).

To summarize, empirical and theoretical work conceptualizes social support-giving as socially and emotionally rewarding and stress-reducing (Inagaki & Orehek, 2017). This suggests that validation of measures of social support-giving will entail positive correlations with feelings of social connectedness and greater life satisfaction (Shakespeare-Finch & Obst, 2011) and negative correlations with loneliness (Inagaki & Eisenberger, 2012), stress (Poulin et al., 2013), and depression (Wolff & Agree, 2004). In addition, the larger people’s social sphere, the greater number of opportunities to provide support to others, particularly those outside the household, so greater social and community engagement would also be expected to be correlated with higher levels of social support-giving. Associations of support-giving with health-relevant outcomes, if independent of perceived social support receipt, would indicate the predictive utility of social support-giving measures.

The Current Study

Our goal was to constitute and validate brief measures of resilience and support-giving that minimize respondent burden and thus lend themselves well to administration in large national surveys such as but not limited to NSHAP. We drew from a variety of extant resilience scales to develop a short scale for inclusion in NSHAP. Here, we evaluate the psychometric properties of this scale and test its convergent validity by examining correlations with criterion variables, including depressive symptoms, life satisfaction, self-rated physical health, cognitive function, and functional limitations. We determine the scale’s predictive utility by examining correlations with criterion variables adjusting for personality traits.

We also develop and evaluate three two-item scales of social support-giving that parallel those asked about social support receipt. These items therefore assess the frequency with which respondents give social support to (a) family members, (b) friends, and (c) a spouse. We evaluate their psychometric properties, and their convergent validity by examining correlations with criterion variables reviewed above, including loneliness, social engagement, perceived stress, depressive symptoms, and life satisfaction. Given prior research linking social support-giving with mortality (Brown et al., 2003; Poulin et al., 2013), we also explore associations of social support-giving with risk factors for premature mortality, including physical, cognitive, and functional health. We determine the predictive utility of measures of social support-giving by examining correlations with criterion variables adjusting for social support receipt in each relationship domain. We include resilience among our criterion variables to assess the plausibility of the idea that support-giving contributes to greater resilience independently of social support receipt.

Method

Sample

For the purposes of this study, we use data from the 4,604 respondents to the 2015 round who were born from 1920 to 1965. Cohort 1 (returning respondents) included those born 1920–1947 and their coresident partners; Cohort 2 (a new cohort added in 2015) included those born 1948–1965 and their coresident partners. The resilience questions and questions about social support-giving to family and friends were included in the Leave-Behind Questionnaire (LBQ). Questions about giving social support to a spouse were included in the in-person questionnaire. Across relationship types, questions about social support-giving were asked in the same mode as, and directly after, questions about social support receipt.

Measures

The items selected for the resilience scale were drawn from extant validated resilience scales and administered in a pretest to identify a minimal set of items to generate a reliable scale. The pretest sample, items, and analytic results are described in Supplementary Material. Four items were selected: “I bounce back quickly after hard times,” “I am an energetic person,” “I take things in stride,” and “I can do just about anything I really set my mind to.” Each item was rated on a 4-point scale: never, some of the time, usually, and always. Responses are summed to create a total resilience score that ranges from 0 to 12, where higher scores represent greater resilience.

In developing measures of social support-giving, we maintained a parallel structure using the same items and support targets as we have done for social support receipt. This strategy has been used in previous research assessing the giving and receiving of emotional support (Brown et al., 2003). The measures of social support-giving thus asked two questions about each of three relationships—spouse, family, friends. The two questions, developed to parallel those asking about social support receipt (Walen & Lachman, 2000), are “how often does [spouse, family, friends] open up to you if [he/she/they] needs to talk about [his/her/their] worries,” and “how often does [spouse, family, friends] rely on you for help if [he/she/they] has a problem,” thus paralleling questions that asked how often the respondent could talk to and rely on others for their help. Response categories were: never, hardly ever or rarely, some of the time, often (scores 0, 1, 2, and 3, respectively).

Measures of criterion variables have been described in prior research and include self-reported physical health (poor = 1, fair, good, very good, excellent = 5), cognition (survey-adapted version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, range 0–20) (Dale et al., 2018), number of activities of daily living (Katz et al., 1963) with which respondents report at least some difficulty (range 0–6), social engagement (summed scale based on frequency of volunteer work, attendance at group meetings, and socializing with friends and family in the past year, range 0–18) (Hawkley et al., 2020), and mental health measures described by Payne and colleagues (2014), including depression (11-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, range 0–22), self-reported happiness (unhappy usually = 1, unhappy sometimes, pretty happy, very happy, extremely happy = 5), loneliness (three-item UCLA Loneliness Scale, range 3–9), and perceived stress (four-item Perceived Stress Scale, items were averaged for analysis, range 1–4). The five personality traits were assessed with a 20-item battery (four items per trait) (Iveniuk et al., 2014).

Analytic Approach

Cronbach’s alphas were calculated to assess the reliabilities of the resilience scale and each of the social support provision scales. Pearson correlation coefficients were used to examine convergent validity and partial correlations were used to test for predictive utility. Statistical significance was set at p <.05.

Multivariate linear regressions were used to estimate the independent associations of gender, age, and race–ethnicity with resilience and social support provision. Survey-weighted unstandardized coefficients are reported.

Results

Scale Reliabilities

Resilience

Each of the resilience items exhibited a relatively normal distribution and occupied the full range of possible scores. Missing data are largely attributable to nonresponse to the LBQ (15.7%); nonresponse at the item level was low at 3.2%–3.3% of the sample, depending on the item. The composite resilience score (N = 3,673 with complete data) was normally distributed. This scale exhibited acceptable reliability, with a Cronbach’s alpha of .72. Table 1 provides the range, mean, and standard deviation for the resilience scale.

Table 1.

Scale Construction Information

NSHAP constructed variable CAPI/LBQ question (variable name) and response scale Scale scores
Resilience
 Resilience LBQ
1.I bounce back quickly after hard times. (BOUNCE)
2.I am an energetic person. (ENERGETIC)
3.I take things in stride. (STRIDE)
4.I can do just about anything I really set my mind to. (SETMIND)
Response scale: 0 = Never, 1 = Some of the time, 2 = Usually, 3 = Always
Responses are summed. Cronbach’s alpha = .72		 Range = 0–12
Mean = 7.9
SD = 2.1
N = 3,673
Social support-giving
 Family support-giving LBQ
1.How often do members of your family open up to you if they need to talk about their worries? (FAMWORRIES)
2.How often do members of your family rely on you for help if they have a problem? (FAMHELP)
Response scale: 0 = Never, 1 = Hardly ever or rarely, 2 = Some of the time, 3 = Often
Responses are averaged. Cronbach’s alpha = .67		 Range = 0–3
Mean = 2.2
SD = 0.7
N = 3,903
 Friend support-giving LBQ
1.How often do your friends open up to you if they need to talk about their worries? (FRWORRIES)
2.How often do your friends rely on you for help if they have a problem? (FRHELP)
Response scale: 0 = Never, 1 = Hardly ever or rarely, 2 = Some of the time, 3 = Often
Responses are averaged. Cronbach’s alpha = .72		 Range = 0–3
Mean = 1.9
SD = 0.7
N = 3,903
 Spousal support-giving CAPI
1.How often does CURRENT PARTNER open up to you if HE/SHE needs to talk about HIS/HER worries? (SPTALK)
2.How often does CURRENT PARTNER rely on you for help if HE/SHE has a problem? (SPRELYHELP)
Response scale: 0 = Never, 1 = Hardly ever or rarely, 2 = Some of the time, 3 = Often
Cronbach’s alpha = .57 (responses not averaged)		 Item 1a
 Range = 0–3
 Mean = 2.4
 SD = 0.8
 N = 3,314
Item 2a
 Range = 0–3
 Mean = 2.6
 SD = 0.6
 N = 3,319
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Notes: CAPI = Computer-Assisted Personal Interview; LBQ = Leave-Behind Questionnaire; NSHAP = National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project.

aBecause the spousal support-giving scale had low reliability, the range, mean, and SD are reported for each item separately. See text for additional details.

Social support-giving

Each of the social support-giving items exhibited a relatively normal distribution, less so for the spousal support-giving items which were skewed to the right, and occupied the full range of possible scores. Missing data for the friend and family subscales are largely attributable to nonresponse to the LBQ. Because the spousal support-giving items were administered during the in-home interview, missing data are rare. The composite family and friend social support-giving scores (see Table 1) were relatively normally distributed, and the scales had acceptable reliability with Cronbach’s alphas of .67 (family support-giving) and .72 (friend support-giving). The spousal support-giving scale had relatively poor reliability at Cronbach’s alpha of .57, and scale scores were therefore not calculated. Analyses are conducted at the item level instead.

Scale Validities

As shown in Table 2, resilience exhibited significant and sizeable associations with criterion variables (rs = |.11| – |.44|). Resilience was significantly correlated (ps < .001) with each personality trait: openness, r = .37; conscientiousness, r = .43; extraversion, r = .41, agreeableness, r = .20; neuroticism, r = −.36. Adjusting for all personality traits, resilience remained significantly correlated with each criterion variable except cognition.

Table 2.

Pearson Correlation Coefficients of Resilience Scores With Criterion Variables (survey-weighted), for Both Cohorts, Cohort 1 Only, and Cohort 1 Adjusted for Personality Traitsa

Resilience
All/Cohort 1 only/Cohort 1 adjusted for personalitya
Depression −.44/−.36/−.21
Physical health .31/.31/.13
Cognition .11/.13/.05
Happiness .39/.30/.18
ADL difficulties −.22/−.22/−.11
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Notes: ADL = activities of daily living. Cohort 1 includes returning respondents born 1920–1947 and their coresident partners; the personality questions were only asked of this cohort (in the Leave-Behind Questionnaire). Bold values = p < .001.

aMean levels of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

In Table 3, scores on the measures of family and friend support-giving were significantly associated with criterion variables, although with relatively low correlations (i.e., rs = |.11| – |.28|). Giving support to family members was correlated with receiving social support from family members, r = .44 (p < .001), and correlations of giving support to family members with happiness, perceived stress, and social engagement remained statistically significant after adjusting for perceived support from family. Giving support to friends was correlated with receiving social support from friends, r = .62 (p < .001), and correlations of giving support to friends with criterion variables remained statistically significant, although about halved in size, after adjusting for support received from friends. Depression and loneliness were no longer associated with friend support-giving after adjusting for support received from friends. Each of the spousal support-giving items exhibited significant correlations in the expected directions with each of the criterion variables, even after adjusting for spousal support receipt on each item, although correlations with social engagement were modest and nonsignificant in the case of item 2 (“partner relies on you”).

Table 3.

Pearson Correlation Coefficients of Social Support-Giving Scores With Criterion Variables (survey-weighted), and Adjusted for Social Support Receipt

Family support-giving Friend support-giving
Zero-order correlation/adjusted for social support receipt
Depression −.12/−.07** −.09/−.03
Happiness .14/.08 .11/.05*
Loneliness −.16/−.09 −.08**/ −.03
Perceived stress −.12/−.08 −.11/−.05*
Social engagement .16/.10 .28/.14
Resilience .19/.16 .16/.11
Spouse support-giving, item 1 (“partner opens up to you”) Spouse support-giving, item 2 (“partner relies on you”)
Zero-order correlation/adjusted for social support receipt
Depression −.23/−.17 −.12/−.09
Happiness .21/.14 .16/.13
Loneliness −.21/−.14 −.13/−.09**
Perceived stress −.12/−.08** −.07/−.05**
Social engagement .07**/.04 .02/.01
Resilience .18/.15 .12/.11
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Notes: Bold values = p < .001.

*p < .05. **p < .01.

As conjectured, resilience was positively correlated with support-giving to a family, friends, and a spouse. Moreover, these correlations were robust to adjustment for social support receipt.

Demographic Differences in Resilience and Social Support-Giving

Table 4 provides means and standard deviations (survey-weighted) of the resilience scale, the support-giving scales for family and friends, and for the two questions on spousal support-giving. These are presented for the sample as a whole, and separately for men and women within each of four age groups. The resilience scale shows a higher mean for men than women (8.1 vs 7.7). Resilience seems quite stable across age in the sample as a whole; men show a more consistent but small decrease in resilience with age than women.

Table 4.

Summary Statistics of the Resilience and Social Support-Giving Scores (survey-weighted)

Total Men Women
Age in 2015a 50–59 60–69 70–79 80–95 Total 50–59 60–69 70–79 80–95 Total 50–59 60–69 70–79 80–95 Total
Resilience, mean (SD) 7.9 (1.8) 8.0 (2.0) 7.9 (2.6) 7.7 (2.7) 7.9 (2.1) 8.2 (1.7) 8.2 (1.9) 8.1 (2.8) 7.9 (2.6) 8.1 (2.1) 7.6 (1.8) 7.9 (2.1) 7.8 (2.5) 7.6 (2.8) 7.7 (2.2)
 N 995 1,082 1,024 572 3,673 437 478 473 255 1,643 558 604 551 317 2,030
Family support-giving, mean (SD) 2.2 (0.6) 2.2 (0.6) 2.1 (0.8) 1.9 (1.0) 2.2 (0.7) 2.1 (0.5) 2.0 (0.6) 2.0 (0.9) 1.9 (0.9) 2.1 (0.7) 2.3 (0.6) 2.3 (0.6) 2.2 (0.8) 1.9 (1.0) 2.2 (0.7)
 N 1,027 1,147 1,090 639 3,903 445 502 502 285 1,734 582 645 588 354 2,169
Friend support-giving, mean (SD) 2.0 (0.6) 1.9 (0.7) 1.9 (0.8) 1.6 (1.0) 1.9 (0.7) 1.8 (0.5) 1.7 (0.7) 1.7 (0.9) 1.5 (1.0) 1.8 (0.7) 2.1 (0.6) 2.1 (0.6) 2.0 (0.8) 1.7 (1.0) 2.1 (0.7)
 N 1,028 1,145 1,089 641 3,903 447 501 502 287 1,737 581 644 587 354 2,166
Spouse support-giving, item 1, mean (SD) 2.4 (0.6) 2.4 (0.7) 2.4 (1.0) 2.3 (1.2) 2.4 (0.8) 2.6 (0.5) 2.5 (0.7) 2.6 (0.9) 2.4 (1.1) 2.6 (0.7) 2.3 (0.7) 2.3 (0.8) 2.2 (1.2) 2.2 (1.4) 2.3 (0.8)
 N 1,014 1,016 909 375 3,314 475 500 494 244 1,713 539 516 415 131 1,601
Spouse support-giving, item 2, mean (SD) 2.6
(0.5)		 2.6 (0.6) 2.7
(0.8)		 2.7
(0.9)		 2.6
(0.6)		 2.7
(0.4)		 2.7
(0.6)		 2.7
(0.7)		 2.7
(0.8)		 2.7
(0.6)		 2.5
(0.6)		 2.5
(0.7)		 2.6
(0.8)		 2.6
(1.1)		 2.5
(0.7)
 N 1,018 1,017 910 374 3,319 477 500 495 243 1,715 541 517 415 131 1,604
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Note: SD = standard deviation. aAged 50–59 years in 2015 = born 1956–1965, aged 60–69 years in 2015 = born 1946–1955, aged 70–79 years in 2015 = born 1936–1945, and aged 80–95 years in 2015 = born 1920–1935.

The scales for giving support to family and friends show intriguing patterns by gender and age. The means for family support-giving, which does not include the spouse/partner, are similar for men and women (although slightly lower for men at some ages). But for friend support-giving, the means reflect lower support given to friends by men than by women. For those 80 and older, both genders show a drop in support given to friends.

We examined gender, age, and racial/ethnic differences in multivariate models for each scale and for the two spousal support-giving items. As shown in Table 5, and consistent with our observations above, women had significantly lower resilience scores than men. Resilience did not differ as a function of age or race/ethnicity.

Table 5.

Unstandardized Coefficients From Multivariate Linear Regressions of Resilience and Social Support-Giving on Gender, Age, and Race–Ethnicity (survey-weighted)

β 95% CI p value
Resilience
 Women (vs men) −0.39 −0.54 to −0.23 <.001
 Age (per year) −0.00 −0.01 to 0.01 .80
 Race/ethnicity (vs White) .68a
  African American 0.13 −0.17 to 0.43 .40
  Hispanic 0.16 −0.19 to 0.52 .36
  Other 0.14 −0.38 to 0.65 .60
Giving support to family
 Women (vs men) 0.17 0.13 to 0.22 <.001
 Age (per year) −0.01 −0.01 to −0.01 <.001
 Race/ethnicity (vs White) .67a
  African American −0.03 −0.12 to 0.06 .49
  Hispanic −0.07 −0.17 to 0.04 .24
  Other −0.01 −0.14 to 0.11 .83
Giving support to friends
 Women (vs men) 0.32 0.26 to 0.37 <.001
 Age (per year) −0.01 −0.01 to −0.01 <.001
 Race/ethnicity (vs White) <.001a
  African American −0.01 −0.08 to 0.05 .67
  Hispanic −0.25 −0.35 to −0.16 <.001
  Other −0.11 −0.23 to 0.02 .09
Giving support to spouse (item 1: “partner opens up to you”)
 Women (vs men) −0.30 −0.36 to −0.24 <.001
 Age (per year) −0.01 −0.01 to −0.00 .002
 Race/ethnicity (vs White) .008a
  African American −0.16 −0.26 to −0.06 .002
  Hispanic 0.02 −0.07 to 0.11 .72
  Other 0.10 −0.04 to 0.24 .18
Giving support to spouse (item 2: “partner relies on you”)
 Women (vs men) −0.20 −0.25 to −0.15 <.001
 Age (per year) 0.00 −0.00 to 0.00 .15
 Race/ethnicity (vs White) .06a
  African American −0.08 −0.16 to 0.01 .09
  Hispanic 0.07 −0.01 to 0.15 .09
  Other −0.02 −0.15 to 0.10 .70
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Note: aOverall test for race–ethnicity, 3 dfs.

Also shown in Table 5, social support-giving differed between men and women such that women reported giving support to family and friends significantly more frequently than men. The opposite pattern of effects was observed for each spousal support-giving item; women reported giving spousal support less frequently than did men. The frequency of giving social support to family and friends decreased with age. A small age-related decrease in spousal support-giving frequency was also evident, but was statistically significant only for item 1 (“partner opens up to you”). Racial–ethnic differences in social support-giving revealed that, relative to Whites, Hispanic respondents reported less frequently giving social support to friends. Racial–ethnic differences in spousal support-giving revealed that item 1 was significantly less frequent among African Americans than Whites. This effect was maintained in an ordinal logistic regression conducted to account for the skewed distribution of responses. For item 2 (“partner relies on you”), only the ordinal regression revealed a racial–ethnic difference (p = .03, not shown); Hispanics more frequently gave support to their spouse than did Whites.

Discussion

Since 2005, NSHAP respondents have provided rich data on their social, mental, cognitive, and physical health and well-being over time. These data are typically used to identify and quantify risk factors for adverse outcomes with age. The absence of risk is not the same as the presence of protection, however. Two new measures were added to the NSHAP survey instrument specifically to assess protective factors. The first was a measure of trait resilience, a characteristic that we conceptualized as a resource that people can draw on when facing a significant stressor. The second was a set of measures of social support-giving in three relationship domains that we conceptualized as individuals’ perceived ability to contribute to someone else’s quality of life. This study showed that these measures have acceptable psychometric characteristics (with the exception of spousal support-giving), convergent validity, and predictive utility net of related variables.

Resilience

The four-item resilience scale exhibited good reliability and approximated a normal distribution as has also been observed for longer multi-item resilience scales (Connor & Davidson, 2003; Wagnild & Young, 1993). We demonstrated convergent validity by showing that our measure of resilience was correlated with measures of theoretically related constructs. Higher levels of trait resilience were related to fewer depressive symptoms, greater happiness, better health, fewer functional limitations, and better cognitive function. We conclude that our scale is a valid measure of trait resilience. Although we adopted the perspective of resilience as a trait, resilience is also a process of dynamically adapting to adversity (Ong et al., 2009). The construct validity of our measure of trait resilience will be enhanced to the extent that it predicts how well older adults withstand, bounce back, and thrive when confronted with adversities in the future.

Personality traits are correlated with the trait of resilience, but the data indicate that our measure of trait resilience has residual predictive utility. Although correlations between resilience and our outcomes were reduced by at least 50% when personality traits were held constant, they remained significant. The one exception was cognitive function, where the zero-order correlation was low (r = .11) and the partial correlation was nonsignificant at r = .05. The fact that cognition is only weakly correlated with resilience raises important questions for future longitudinal research. Does resilience protect against cognitive decline? Does cognitive decline predict a decrease in resilience? Does poor cognitive function dampen the relationship between resilience and physical and mental health outcomes? Answers to these questions have much to offer research, policy, and practice for the growing population of older adults at risk for cognitive impairment and dementia, and are made possible with the new NSHAP resilience measure.

Resilience can be learned and developed. Prior experiences with hardships have been associated with greater resilience in older adults, likely because at least some of these hardships were positive experiences that ended in adaptation or recovery (Resnick, 2018). These experiences reinforce character strengths and abilities that can then be brought to bear in other challenging circumstances. Moreover, resilience involves more than just individual attributes, but also involves protective factors such as close supportive relationships (Ong et al., 2009). Our data indicate that not only getting but also giving help and support to others is associated with greater resilience.

Demographic differences

Resilience scores did not differ between Whites and racial/ethnic minority groups (African American, Hispanic, other), but did differ between men and women. Perhaps surprisingly, women had lower resilience scores than men. Prior research on trait resilience has been mixed. Using the Wagnild Resilience Scale, gender differences in resilience were not observed among community-dwelling older adults in the Northwest United States (Wagnild & Young, 1993), or among older adults in the International Mobility in Aging Study (Phillips et al., 2016). Other research appears consistent with our findings. In a community sample, resilience scores on the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale were lower in women than in men (Campbell-Sills et al., 2009). Among cardiac patients, scores on the Brief Resilience Scale were also lower in women than men (Smith et al., 2008). On the other hand, in a study that took a dynamic, process-oriented approach to resilience, women were more resilient than men. In the British Household Panel Survey, resilience was operationalized as scores on the General Health Questionnaire that worsened after adversity (i.e., functional limitation, bereavement or marital separation, poverty) and returned to pre-exposure levels 1 year later. Using this definition of resilience, women were over-represented among the resilient (60% vs 40%) (Netuveli et al., 2008). We therefore tentatively conclude that self-reported measures of resilience may elicit sex differences in responses, with men reporting generally higher resilience than women, but women exhibiting higher resilience in the context of adversity (i.e., returning to preadversity levels of health and well-being). This justifies the approach taken by some researchers who consider resilience from both a trait and process perspective simultaneously (Ong et al., 2009).

Resilience showed a decline at ages 80+ (Table 4), but in the multivariate analysis, resilience was not significantly associated with age across the 50- to 95-year-old age range. This supports our conjecture that the capacity to respond adaptively in the face of adversity can be maintained with age. That said, we cannot rule out the possibility that less resilient older adults have died (Shen & Zeng, 2011) and we are therefore studying resilient survivors.

Social Support-Giving

The reliability of the social support-giving measure differed among subscales. Whereas the reliability of the friend and family support-giving subscales were acceptable, the spousal support-giving subscale only achieved a reliability of .57, and was roughly similar for men and women. We therefore recommend that these two items be treated separately rather than combined as a single composite measure.

We hypothesized that greater social and community engagement would increase opportunities to provide help to a wide range of people, including those outside the household. Our results support this hypothesis; the correlation between social engagement and social support-giving is largest for friends, smaller for family members, and smallest for spouses/partners. This provides initial evidence of the validity of our measure and subscales.

In addition, results confirmed that people who provided support to friends and family felt less lonely, stressed, and depressed, and were happier with their lives overall. This pattern of results is consistent with the idea that giving social support enhances one’s own life by virtue of helping to improve the quality of others’ lives. In the case of spousal support, having a partner “open up to you” was more highly correlated with outcomes than having a partner “rely on you.” This is perhaps not surprising since opening up to one another likely entails emotional disclosure that builds relationship bonds in way that (physical) reliance may not, and physical reliance may be burdensome in a way that emotional disclosure is not. The robust correlations between support-giving and resilience across all relationship types, and independent of social support receipt, further support the theoretical relationship between resilience and support-giving. Resilience may improve the ability to give support to others, and/or giving support to others may enhance resilience.

Demographic differences

Friend and family support-giving decreased with age. This is not surprising given that less social support is expected of older adults as they age; friends and family may indeed be less likely to seek support from older adults whom they believe to be in need of support. The negative associations with age were virtually identical in magnitude in analyses limited to married/partnered individuals (results available upon request). Regarding spousal support-giving, only one item showed a very small decrease with age, generally consistent with the growing importance of the spouse as a provider of support with age as other sources of support fall away.

Hispanic respondents gave social support to friends less frequently than did Whites, but did not differ in the frequency with which they gave support to family members. Hispanics have also been observed to receive lower levels of support from friends than Whites, a phenomenon that the authors posited could be attributable to cultural differences in the centrality of the family and the acceptability of seeking social support outside of one’s close social network (Chang et al., 2014). For the same reason, cultural differences may contribute to the lower frequency of giving support to friends.

Regarding spousal support-giving, racial–ethnic differences varied across the two items, a finding that supports our recommendation that researchers use these items individually. Relative to Whites, African Americans reported that their partner less frequently opened up to them, and Hispanics reported that their partner more frequently relied on them. Marriages differ in a number of ways across racial–ethnic groups, and these differences are a topic of research exploring complexity at the intersection of race and marriage. For instance, the greater prevalence of multigenerational households and obligations to them among African Americans relative to Whites may come at the expense of the marital relationship (Bryant, 2010). NSHAP’s measures of given and received social support allow researchers to further their exploration of racial differences in spousal support-giving and its impact on health and well-being.

Prior research has shown that men report getting more social support from their wives than wives report getting from their husbands (Nurullah, 2012), which suggests that we should have observed wives more frequently giving support to their husbands than vice versa. Instead, we found that husbands reported more frequently giving support to their wives, and this was true whether the question asked how often the partner opened up to them about their worries or how often the partner relied on them for help with a problem. We conjecture that this pattern of results reflects a gender difference in reporting rather than actual support-giving. The wording of the questions may be informative in this regard. For instance, wives may (accurately) report that their husbands are not very likely to open up to them, but that does not mean that wives do not sense and respond to men’s unspoken need for support (MacGeorge et al., 2003).

In our study, women reported more frequently giving social support to family and friends than men, and this finding is paralleled by previous research showing that women also receive more of their support from relatives and friends than do men (Nurullah, 2012). Indeed, men are less likely to have supportive friends (Consedine et al., 2005). Together, these results point to the need for more research on gender differences in social support reciprocity in each relationship domain and its effects on health and well-being.

Conclusions

NSHAP has focused since its inception on the quality and nature of social relationships, and on other characteristics of individuals, partnerships, families, and environments that affect and are affected by the social world. However, much of the research in NSHAP and other studies of aging have continued a tradition of identifying risk factors for adverse outcomes and have not adequately addressed the strengths that older adults have accumulated over a lifetime and that may render them more or less equipped to recover from life challenges that come with aging. With the empirical validation of our brief measures of resilience and support-giving, we encourage their deployment in other population-based studies of older adults. The longitudinal component of national surveys such as NSHAP is particularly valuable because it permits examination of resilience as a dynamic process that can be affected for good or ill in the face of adversity (Ong et al., 2009), and where support-giving represents a resilience-building asset. Including these measures will lead to insights on the development and deployment of strengths that have social relationships at their core.

Key Points

  • NSHAP’s newly introduced measure of resilience demonstrated good reliability and validity, and was associated with health outcomes even after controlling for personality differences with which resilience is related. We encourage users to expand on the scale’s predictive utility by examining a wider range of outcomes and adjusting for additional individual characteristics.

  • We encourage users to expand on the construct validity of the resilience scale by examining its capacity to predict adaptive responses to adverse life events in a longitudinal context; dynamic approaches to resilience (what do people actually do, not simply how they score on a scale) should be considered when seeking to understand differential recovery from adversity.

  • NSHAP’s newly introduced measures of giving social support to others consists of two reliable and valid scales that assess support provided to family members and friends. We encourage users to explore these measures alone or in combination with parallel scales of social support receipt to evaluate their unique and combined effects on health and well-being.

  • The items administered to assess the frequency of giving social support to a spouse/partner did not form a reliable scale; we recommend that users treat the items individually.

Supplementary Material

gbab091_suppl_Supplementary_Material
Click here for additional data file. (57.5KB, pdf)

Funding

This paper was published as part of a supplement supported by funding for the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, from the National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health (R01 AG021487, R01 AG033903, R01 AG043538, and R01 AG048511). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health, or NORC.

Conflict of Interest

None declared.

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