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Peer telephone dyads: Putting conclusions on hold
Author(s) -
Gottlieb Benjamin H.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
american journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.113
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1573-2770
pISSN - 0091-0562
DOI - 10.1007/bf00942260
Subject(s) - health psychology , intervention (counseling) , interpersonal communication , psychology , social support , social psychology , action (physics) , perception , interpersonal relationship , generative grammar , process (computing) , applied psychology , public health , medicine , nursing , computer science , psychiatry , quantum mechanics , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , operating system , physics
Conclusion Through systematic study of intervention trials, which are as carefully crafted and as critically examined as the one reported here, we can gain new insights into ways of intentionally creating the interpersonal and environmental conditions conducive to the expression and acceptance of support. To plan appropriate and acceptable changes in the social ecology, we must develop a theory of the intervention, drawing on both the voluminous generative base of research on social support and on knowledge gained from examination of the particular forces that potentiate and limit exchanges of support in the networks of the intended beneficiaries. In conducting the intervention, careful recordings of the interpersonal transactions that take place and their bearing on the parties' perceptions of the evolving character of the relationship can bring the needed process dimension to emergent theory on social support. And by evaluating the impact of the intervention on a range of proximal and distal outcomes, we can discern more clearly how social support's mechanisms of action confer measurable benefits, particularly those prized by the participants themselves.