The 13 item Family Support Scale: Reliability and validity of the Greek translation in a sample of Greek health care professionals

In order to determine the indicator of validity of content we addressed nine expert professionals and one sociologist, asking them to evaluate how much relevant to the sense of familial support are the items of the questionnaire. Additionally, to assess reliability we used a sample of health care professionals.There was agreement among experts for the validity of content. Cronbach's alpha for the total items was 0.820, pointing to high validity. Only replacing item four could increase the scale's validity, but without significant differences.The scale, in its Greek version, appears to be a brief and reliable tool that can be used for inpatients, in clinics as well as in epidemiologic studies of received family support.In the international bibliography of health psychology, many studies have attempted to delineate the relationship between the input in family support of patients with acute or chronic disease or their level of anxiety or depression [1], as well as the effect of this support in the confrontation of illness [2,3]. Simultaneously, other research studies have focused in the cross-correlation of degrees of familial support with the presence of burnout in health professionals and, particularly, in nurses [4]. The Julkunen Family Support Scale (Julkunen J & Greenglass ER: The family support scale, submitted) has been conceived in Finland and aims to record the sense of support that a subject receives from the members of his family (with whom he/she lives). The scale is constituted by 13 items, which are answered on a Likert scale, ranging from 1 ("I disagree a lot") to 5 ("I agree a lot"). Examples of subjects of particular items are: "My family supports me in each my effort" (item 1) and "there is no benefit in speaking about your daily difficulties at home" (item 4). At the same time, the examinee is asked to record the number of members of his family that live together. Seven of thirteen items (items 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11) are graded inversely. The scal