| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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The match between electronic network characteristics and online support is accurately predicted by the model’s specifications 85% of the time. Thus the network support-specific model provides an understanding of how social support is transmitting within the SOL-Cancer Forum by describing the kinds of actors who request and provide different supports and explaining why this is the case.
Background of the Study
The influence of social relations on well-being has long been a subject of study across disciplines. In sociology, Emile Durkheim (1951) proposed social relations as the cause of a society’s suicide rate. Later, Cobb (1976) and Cassel (1976) introduced the subject to the field of epidemiology with the notion that social support affects health and well-being, and began an era of interdisciplinary social support research. Researchers quickly divided into two camps: those who espoused the buffer effects of social support on stress (Landman-Peeters et al., 2005; Lin, Ensel, Simeone, & Kuo, 1979; Orth-Gomer, 1994; Wallace, 2005) and those who believed that social support had a direct effect on well-being (Berkman & Breslow 1983; Cohen, Teresi, & Holmes, 1987; White & Cant, 2003). Litwak et al. (1989), however, put fourth a unique theory and framework to clarify when social support would be available and how it could impact health (see also Messeri, Silverstein, & Litwak, 1993).
Meanwhile, sociologists who espoused social network theory added yet another dimension to the study of social support by introducing the salience of social network features. Network attributes were shown to facilitate access to some forms of social support and constrain the availability of others.