ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology of Aging
Forms of support giving and receiving, and their associations with self-perceived health and general self-efficacy among older adults in Switzerland
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- 2Berner Fachhochschule, Bern, Switzerland
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Our aim was to examine associations between determinants of functional ability by World Health Organization: intrinsic psychological domain assesed by general self-efficacy and self-rated health, and social environment assessed by support given and received. 286 Swiss-based older adults, recruited via multiple channels, completed a web-based survey of self-reports. Older adults reported providing more support than they perceived receiving, particularly within informal networks of spouses/partners, children, friends, and neighbors. They also reported high levels of general self-efficacy and good to very good self-perceived health. Out of thirteen forms of support giving and receiving, only providing support to friends /acquintances and to fellow club/association members correlated positively with general self-efficacy. Self-perceived health showed negative associations with receiving various forms of support but was unrelated to providing different forms of support. On the basis of these results, we propose new avenues for examining asociations betwen social support, self-efficacy, and self-rated health.
Keywords: Functional ability, general self-efficacy, internal capacities, Older age, Self-perceived health, social environment, support
Received: 03 Dec 2025; Accepted: 30 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Gashi, Kaspar and Grosse Holtforth. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Shkumbin Gashi
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