Gayle A. Dakof and Shelley E. Taylor conducted a study on victims’ perceptions of social support and what is helpful from whom? It is pretty obvious that interpersonal relationships have a great influence on psychological well-being. 
Their goal was to find which kinds of social support can contribute to coping successfully to a stressful event. Dakof and Taylor focused specifically on cancer patients and wanted them to specify particular acts performed by their social support that are helpful and unhelpful. Victimizing events can create conflicting reactions in significant others. They may physically avoid the victim, avoid open communication about the caner and its consequences, or engage in forced cheerfulness. The victim may result in feeling rejected, abandoned, or too much pressure. In order to avoid these negative feelings, they wanted to interview cancer patients to understand the types of social support the want or don’t want.
The sample consisted of 55 cancer patients who were ranging from grave prognosis to indicating probable cure. The respondents were asked question about their experience with seven different groups of people, their spouse or partner, 
other family members, friends, support group members or others who they know who have or had cancer, physicians and acquaintances or strangers. There were three specific common support categories; esteem/emotional support, informational support and tangible support. Patients found esteem/emotional support to be the most helpful received from their spouse, family and friends. Informational support from other cancer patients and physicians were the most helpful. Very few found tangible support to be helpful.
I thought that this article was a good start to finding different types of social supports. As I was reading through the article I thought of some ways to possible improve their study. I am no research expert or anything close but I think they needed more variety. For example, Dakof and Taylor should have incorporated more ethnic backgrounds since 93% of the participants were Caucasian. Having a wide spectrum of different ethnicity’s would speak to a bigger audience. For example, Hispanics relate a lot to other Hispanics so including their perspective on helpful social support in this study would allow them to relate to the article. Also incorporating an equal amount of patients who are newly diagnosed, those who are cured and those who are terminally ill. This would bring a more broad array of results so more could relate.
A major variable Dakof and Taylor could incorporate into their study are personality traits. Everyone handles situations in different ways. They could have recruited patients with all types of different personality traits and group them. Once they established a variety of different groups, then they could continue with the interview. This would allow those who are looking for helpful social support, to 
look based off of their personality. Personally, I am not one to talk about critical events that are going on in my life. I am the one to avoid the conversation and bring it up when I am ready to talk about it. One of my best friends is the kind of person who would constantly talk about her critical life events and seek social support from others.
Now that I attempted to bring out my “inner-researcher”, let’s be a little more positive. I really enjoyed reading this article because it gave me a new perspective on different ways to approach friends and family who are going through a tough time or illness. Sometimes I treat others the way I would want to be treated in certain situations but I need to remember not everyone thinks as “cold” or are as avoidant as I am. The fact that Dakof and Taylor interviewed the patients with open ended questions gave better results as opposed to a survey with limited options.
I was reading a research study on the quality of life and social support in cancer patients. The study concluded that successful social support resulted in a better and more positive quality of life, which is important for those who are dealing with a chronic illness such as cancer. The authors concluded that those who thought more positively were able to cope and had an increase in social support. Perception is everything ! http://journals.lww.com/cancernursingonline/Abstract/1996/06000/Longitudinal_study_on_quality_of_life_and_social.2.aspx
The authors that conducted this research wanted to examine whether engaging in a leisurely activity would help people/patient’s psychological and physiological functioning. They defined leisurely activities as something that is pleasing and enjoyable for that certain individual. This activity is something that that particular person loves to do. So it could include a vacation, a walk, shopping, hanging out with friends, sports.. you get the idea.
The idea is that these fun activities will help you reduce any stress going on in your life and just benefit your overall well-being. The authors had five hypotheses; higher SES would be associated with greater frequency of these activities, it would be associated with a better mood, there would be an improvement on physiological function, these activities would not be entirely responsible for any found connected between the PEAT and well-being and finally, individuals will experience less distress. The results that they found were that those who has a higher income and education engaged in more frequent activities, especially women. What wasn’t a surprise was that they found that those that took time out of their day to do what they considered fun, were more satisfied and engaged in life. Those people also got better sleep, probably because they were so tired from having so much fun.. just kidding! jokes aside.. Their main message was to take some time out of your life to do what you really enjoy doing. Engaging in a fun activity is only going to benefit you positively.
doing something for yourself. Especially parents! They are literally superheroes and are always so focused on doing everything for their kids. They feel so much pressure to do everything which obviously causes some stress so being able to take some time out of their day to do something they love is super important. Plus they deserve it! Superheroes need some fun too! This is also very important for students. We are 
always so caught up on doing work that we forget to do things to relax and reduce stress.
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