A measure of the social support received from family, friends, and outsiders was administered 6 months after Hurricanes Andrew (non-Hispanic n = 270, Hispanic n = 134) and Paulina (Mexican n = 200) and to a normative sample (n = 1,289) representative of urban Mexico. Pilot work with bilingual participants established that equivalent scores were yielded by Spanish and English versions of the instrument. Exemplars of helping showed similar rank-order frequency within samples to form a pattern that was equivalent across samples. A three-factor model that differentiated between emotional, informational, and tangible support described the help received from each source in each sample. Despite the apparent conceptual invariance of social support, levels of support differed strongly. The Paulina sample received more help of each type from each source than the normative sample but less help of each type from each source than the Andrew sample. Within the Andrew sample, Hispanic and non-Hispanic persons did not differ. Rules of relative need and relative advantage that have been found to influence resource distribution at the individual level appear to operate at community and societal levels as well.
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