Medical Outcomes Study:  Social Support Survey Scoring Instructions

How to score the survey

The survey consists of four separate social support subscales and an overall functional social support index. A higher score for an individual scale or for the overall support index indicates more support.

• To obtain a score for each subscale, calculate the average of the scores for each item in the subscale.
• To obtain an overall support index, calculate the average of (1) the scores for all 18 items included in the four subscales, and (2) the score for the one additional item (see last item in the survey).
• To compare to published means in the article referenced below, scale scores can be transformed to a 0 - 100 scale using the following formula:
  
  
  
  

Related reading:

The MOS Social Support Survey

Sherbourne CD and Stewart AL. Soc Sci. Med. Vol 32, No. 6, 1991, pp 705-714.
This document contains more details about the survey and a discussion of its validity and reliability.

Abstract