¿Es la sobreprotección un constructo diferente del apoyo social? || Is overprotection a different construct of social support?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to contribute to a better definition of the overprotection construct. More specifically, it aims at establishing whether or not it can be considered just an excess of social support. To do this, two instruments, OPSA and UCLA-SSI, developed from different perspectives on the issue, were translated and adapted from English into Spanish. Analysis performed on a diverse sample of 436 subjects show a good reliability of scores obtained with the Spanish versions, as much on the OPSA test (α = .82 with the full format and α = .81 with the short one) as on the two selected subscales of the UCLA-SSI test (α = .88 with Need/ Want Support subscale, and α = .90 with the Support Received subscale). The relationship among the different measurements was analyzed in a typical sample of 50 recent myocardial infarction patients, as usual in this field. Results suggest that overprotection differs both in quality and quantity from given social support, but it is however related to needed social support. This new finding seems to indicate that those individuals who are more in need of social support could indeed be the more overprotected ones. Clinical and educational implications of the results are discussed.