Social support by four categories of work colleagues: Relationships between activities, stress and satisfaction

An approach to the study of social support at work is presented emphasizing nature and type of social support. One hundred employees in a range of occupations rated the frequency of engaging in 12 types of social and work‐related activity with each of four work colleagues varying in degree of intimacy. They also rated levels of job satisfaction and work stress. The results confirm the usefulness of this approach and also suggest that type of work relationship is associated with different sorts of socially supportive activities, and that these affect stress but not satisfaction. These findings were discussed in terms of the interaction between type of support given, source of support, and outcome.