Does level of assessment moderate the relation between social support and social negativity? A meta-analysis

We employed meta-analytic techniques to examine the validity of the claim that social support and social negativity are unrelated. It was hypothesized that the inverse relation between social support and social negativity increases as the specificity of the level of the assessment increases. A total of 280 effect sizes (e.g., concurrent correlations between self-report measures of social support and negativity) were extracted from 87 journal articles and book chapters. In fixed effects models, the mean weighted effect size was -.08 for general assessments, -.18 for category-specific assessments, and -.34 for individual-specific assessments. Among effect sizes derived from individual-specific assessments, the relation between social support and social negativity was particularly strong when the provider was a spouse/significant other (weighted M= -.43). In weighted multiple regression analyses employing both fixed and random effect sizes models, level of assessment/type of provider remained significant (p < .001) in the presence of several covariates. Among the covariates, the strongest predictor was social negativity scale. Social support and social negativity appear to be moderately, inversely related when (a) the assessment focuses on the spouse/significant other relationship and (b) the Social Conflict Scale is used to measure social negativity.