Social support (OSS-3) by country and gender (source: Dalgard et al., 2006a)

Remarks

The OSS-3 (Dalgard et al., 2006a) was used to measure perceived social support in each of the five countries.

The three items in the OSS-3 shown separately include: 'confidants' (no. of people close enough to count on when in problems, scale 1-4); 'concern' (concern shown by other people in what you are doing, scale 1-5); and 'neighbours' (how easy to get practical help from neighbours, scale 1-5). The total score is calculated by summarizing the scores for each item. Cases with lacking information on one or more items are excluded. See the Oslo-3 Social Support Scale.

Data come from a cross-sectional, multinational community survey from five European countries (n=8.787), and were collected 1996-1998. The study is part of the ODIN project, a multinational, community-based study of the prevalence and outcome of depression (Dowrick et al., 2000)

The sample was drawn from five cities and four rural areas (no rural area from Spain). In Spain, Finland and Norway the sample was randomly drawn from the population registers. In Liverpool a random set of names was obtained from health authorities. In Ireland and Northern Wales (rural area of UK), relevant practices were identified from which a random set of names from their patient lists were selected. The questionnaires were distributed by mail, with the exception of Spain, where home visits were used.