Studying Social Support Through WhatsApp: First Steps of a New Methodology

In this paper, we introduce a new methodology—the WhatsApp Interview (WAI)—for studying individuals’ social network and its key features by asking a set of standard questions about their WhatsApp conversations. We developed and tested this methodology through three studies: 1) a first qualitative study (15 interviews) aimed at exploring the number of conversations individuals consider as representative of their social network and the key features they attribute to them; 2) a survey involving a convenience student sample (N=87) for an early assessment of the nomological validity; and 3) a survey on a representative sample of the Italian population (N = 719), to further assess the instrument and its validity. The results support our basic idea that a standard set of questions, repeated for a limited number (from five to ten) of WhatsApp conversations, may provide a reliable picture of individuals’ social network. The nomological validity of the WAI has been supported in study 2 and 3. Finally, three of the characteristics measured – the proportion of dyadic versus group conversations, the perceived importance, the frequency of offline interactions – are predictive of life satisfaction (study 3).