The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between social support and level of hope in adolescents. The subjects were 400 adolescents in two middle schools and two high schools located in Gwangju, Jeonnam Province. Social support and ho...
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between social support and level of hope in adolescents. The subjects were 400 adolescents in two middle schools and two high schools located in Gwangju, Jeonnam Province. Social support and hope were assessed by self-report using the modified Social Support Scale (Yoon, 1993) and Hope Scale (Kwon, 2008) respectively. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, Cronbach's alphas, t-tests, Pearson's product moment correlations and hierarchical multiple regression analyses.
The major findings were as follows:
1. There were significant differences in perceived social support by gender and grade. Girls reported greater social support than boys did and middle school students reported greater social support than high school students did. However, there was no significant difference in perceived social support by religious experience.
2. There was no significant difference in level of hope by gender or grade. However, there was significant difference in level hope by religious experience. Students with religious experience reported higher level of hope than students without religious experience did.
3. There were significant positive relationships between social support and level of hope in adolescents. That is to say, parents' support, teachers' support and friends' support were positively associated with hope in adolescents. Furthermore, emotional support, appraisal support, informational support and material support were positively associated with hope in adolescents.
4. Adolescents' hope was affected by gender, religious experience and social support. That is, gender and religious experience explained 2.2% of variance in hope. Parents' support, teachers' support and friends' support explained additional 18.3% of variance in hope. Specifically, informational support of parents and appraisal support of friends were the two most important factors in predicting hope of adolescents.