Validation of the Brazilian Portuguese version of the Medical Outcomes Study-Social Support Survey in Hodgkin's lymphoma survivors.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the Brazilian Portuguese version of the "Medical Outcomes Study-Social Support Survey (MOS-SSS)" in Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) survivors. METHODS: The MOS-SSS is a 19-item questionnaire with five scales covering different aspects of social support (affection, positive social interaction, emotional, informational, and material). A sample of 200 HL survivors completed a self-administered questionnaire at the treatment center or at home. RESULTS: The median age of the patients at diagnosis was 29 years (16­77), and the median follow-up since diagnosis was 7 years (3.6-12.7). Item-corrected Pearson correlation coefficients between items and their dimensions varied from 0.57 to 0.76. Internal consistency, evaluated using Cronbach's alpha, was 0.95 for the overall scale, ranging from 0.78 to 0.87 for the five subscales proposed by the original instrument. An exploratory factor analysis yielded a three-factor solution, aggregating affection and positive social interaction, and emotional and informational dimensions of social support. Higher socioeconomic status and higher social network were associated with higher levels of all kinds of support. CONCLUSION: Results show good general psychometric properties of the Brazilian version of the MOS-SSS when applied to HL survivors. The three-factor structure identified in this study is in line with a previous validation among Brazilian healthy civil servants. The Brazilian Portuguese version will now be used to evaluate social support and its association with long-term disease outcomes and quality of life of Hodgkin's lymphoma survivors.