Perceived Social Support and Coping Strategies among Cancer Patients

The present study was conducted to investigate relationship between coping skills and social support among cancer patients. For this purpose, by incidental sampling, 50 cancer patients (24 males & 26 females, mean age = 50.8) were assessed on Coping Strategies Inventory by David Tobin and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support by Zimet et al. Mean perceived social support was 57.42. To assess its relationship with coping strategies, Pearson's Product Moment Correlation was run on the obtained data. Perceived social support was significantly correlated with problem focused engagement (0.47**), emotion focused engagement (0.41**), and emotion focused disengagement (-0.49**). As social support increases, problem focused engagement and emotion focused engagement also increases whereas, emotion focused disengagement decreases.