Exploring social support: How sources and types relate to academic self-perception and emotions in primary school students

Social support plays a crucial role in students' academic and emotional experiences, offering reassurance and guidance from different sources. Very few studies have separated the sources and types of support to analyze their respective influences. The purpose of this study is to identify the most frequently perceived types of support (i.e., emotional, informational, instrumental and appraisal) from different sources (i.e., parents, teachers and classmates), and to analyze which types of support are associated with academic self-perceived competence and classroom emotions. This study examine the perceived social support of 666 primary school students using the Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale (CASSS, Malecki & Demaray, 2002). The results show that students primarily perceived emotional and informational support from parents, informational support from teachers, and emotional and instrumental support from their classmates. Multilevel regression analyses reveal that classmate support is associated with all outcome variables, whereas parental support predicts self-perceived competence and anxiety. Teacher instrumental support predicts only joy and boredom. These findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between sources and types of support when examining their relationships with student outcomes.