Social Constraints Among Bereaving Turkish Adults: Testing The Construct And Convergent Validity And Relıability of the Social Constraints Scale (Scs)

Abstract

Recent studies revealed the significance of social support on human functioning and wellbeing,and also the adverse effect of social constraints and lack of support. Especially afternegative life events such as loss of a loved one, individuals search for support and when not found,adaptation becomes problematic. Thus, measuring and monitoring the perceptions of socialconstraints is important as well as the social support. This study aimed to conduct the initialreliability and validity analyses of the Social Constraints Scale (SCS) in a Turkish population. SCSand Two-Track Bereavement Questionnaire (TTBQ) were administered to 323 bereavedindividuals (222 females and 101 males) with a mean age of 35.31 (SD = 14.63). Relational activegrieving (RAG) and biopsychosocial functioning subscales of TTBQ were used to test thecriterion-related validity of the SCS. Results suggested that SCS had good reliability and validityresults, and had significant positive correlations with both RAG and biopsychosocial functioning.Moreover, according to the results, when the bereaved perceive more social constraints, they alsohave more problems with functioning and maladaptive grieving. Results of the initial constructvalidity, criterion-related validity and internal consistency tests showed that, the Turkish SCS is avalid and reliable scale.