We operationalized perceived social support with 3 items from the CHI Panel Survey.The first question was adopted from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System(BRFSS), which monitors the prevalence of key health characteristics across the U.S.(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2006). The question stated, “How often doyou get the social and emotional support you need?” Response categories were always,usually, sometimes, rarely, and never. To simplify the interpretation of this variable inthe descriptive analyses, the always/usually and the rarely/never categories were combined. The second question asked, “How socially isolated do you feel?” The responsecategories were not at all, slightly, moderately, very, extremely. Again, we recoded thisinto a three-category variable by combining the not at all/slightly and the very/extremelycategories. The third question asked, “Over the past year, how often have you felt lonelyand isolated in your work?” Respondents could choose very often, fairly often, once in awhile, and never. The once in a while and never categories were combined.We also combined several variables to construct a perceived social support scale. Thisscale was constructed by summing the raw scores of: the BRFSS item (0–4), the reversecoded social isolation question (0–4), and the reverse-coded question on social isolationat work (reverse coded, 0–3). This scale had an acceptable internal validity, with an alphaof .75. A principal component analysis indicated that these items all loaded on a singleunderlying factor. The scale ranged from 0 to 11, with higher values indicating higherlevels of perceived support. In reg