Social support and presence of meaning among students with visual impairments in a Chinese vocational college: the indirect association through hope

Objective This cross-sectional study (1) compared social support, psychological-capital dimensions, and both C-MLQ dimensions between students with and without visual impairments; and (2) among students with visual impairments, examined the association between social support and presence of meaning (C-MLQ-P) and tested the a priori hypothesized cross-sectional indirect association through hope. Self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism were examined exploratorily in descriptive/correlational and hierarchical-regression analyses. Methods Participants were 170 students with visual impairments and 294 students without visual impairments from a vocational college in China. They completed measures of social support, psychological capital, and meaning in life. Group differences were examined using MANCOVA with follow-up ANCOVAs. Among students with visual impairments, Pearson correlations and an exploratory hierarchical regression were conducted, and H3 was tested using a single cross-sectional indirect-effect model with social support (ASSS-Total) as the predictor, hope (PPQ-Hop) as the indirect variable, presence of meaning (C-MLQ-P) as the outcome, and age and sex as covariates. Results After adjustment for age and sex, students with visual impairments scored significantly lower on objective support, support utilization, self-efficacy, optimism, presence of meaning, and search for meaning than students without visual impairments, whereas no significant group differences were observed for subjective support, resilience, or hope. Among students with visual impairments, social support was positively associated with the presence of meaning (r = 0.56, p < 0.01). In the H3 model, the total association between social support and presence of meaning was 0.8912 (95% CI [0.6988, 1.0835]), the direct association was 0.3560 (95% CI [0.1655, 0.5465]), and the indirect association through hope was 0.5352 (BootSE = 0.0923, 95% bootstrap CI [0.3680, 0.7239]). Conclusions In this sample from a single Chinese vocational college, social support was positively associated with the presence of meaning, and a significant cross-sectional statistical indirect association was observed through hope. Because the data were cross-sectional, the observed indirect association does not establish temporal ordering or a causal mechanism. Longitudinal and experimental studies are needed to determine whether changes in social support precede changes in hope and presence of meaning.