Psychological Development and Education ›› 2015, Vol. 31 ›› Issue (4): 393-401.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2015.04.02

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Meta-analytic Review on The Gender Differences in Perceived Social Support

ZHANG Shupeng, ZHANG Qingyao, LI Caina   

  1. Department of Psychology, Key Laboratory of Modern Teaching Technology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710062, China
  • Online:2015-07-15 Published:2015-07-15

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Abstract: Researches on stress and coping strategy have shown that one of the most effective means by which individuals cope with stressful events is social support. There has been substantial evidence showing the benefits of different forms of social support for both mental and physical health, of which the perceived social support is the most essential one. Most existing researches showed that females perceived more social support than males, but some others held the contrary opinion. However, up to now, there has been not a comprehensive review regarding this controversy.
A meta-analysis of 58 independent studies published between 2002 and 2014, which employed the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support to investigate gender difference in perceived social support among Chinese, was conducted in present study. 31286 participants (15279 males) were included in this analysis. After literature selection and screening, 59 independent effect sizes (Cohen's d) were picked out as meta-analysis unit according to the inclusion criteria. After coding of study characteristics, independent effect sizes were analyzed by Synthesizer 1.0 R software. The present research included three methodological procedures, including main effect analysis, publication bias test and moderation effect analysis. In addition, the fixed-effect model that assumed a common effect for results of all researches performed poorly under the condition of effect size heterogeneity, and the unrealistic assumption about random sampling of observed effect sizes from a normally distributed superpopulation of random-effect model made it difficult to achieve (Krizan, 2009), so the varying-coefficient model recently proposed by Bonett (2008, 2009) was preferred in this article. As shown in results: (1) there existed a significant gender difference in perceived social support, specifically, females scored higher than males on overall support, family support, support outside family, friends support, and significant others support; (2) the results of the moderation analyses indicated that the gender differences in family support and overall support among middle school students was smaller, as compared to those of undergraduates.
To sum up, females did perceive more social support than males and the gender difference among middle school students was smaller than that of undergraduates on family support and overall support. The results could be explained by the gender difference in perception, or/and the fact that females get more supports from the surroundings. The implications of these findings were also discussed.

Key words: Perceived Social Support, Gender Differences, Meta-analysis

CLC Number: 

  • B844
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