Spousal adjustment on international assignments: the role of social support

The role of social support on international relocations is important because an overseas assignment presents both the disruption of established social support networks and the challenge to develop new ones. Such changes can be especially stressful for relocated accompanying spouses, due to competing family responsibilities, social isolation, sociopolitical constraints, and changes in their social and/or work status. Participants in this study were 194 women who had moved temporarily to a new Country primarily because of their husband/partners' jobs; they were living in one of 17 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, or Latin America. Women with higher adjustment (a) were in more cohesive families, (b) had had more involvement in the decision to move, (c) felt they had fewer losses in friendship networks, (d) had more functions of social Support adequately met, and (e) received more of their support from local rather than long-distance providers, compared with those with lower adjustment. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.