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	Culturagram	Social Support Assessment
Field	Social Work	Social Work
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1994	1988
Originator	Elaine P. Congress	Multiple traditions; perceived-support scale by Zimet et al., buffering theory by Cohen & Wills
Type	Visual family-assessment tool for understanding the influence of culture	Assessment of the structure, function, and perceived adequacy of a client's social support
Seminal source	Congress, E. P. (1994). The use of culturagrams to assess and empower culturally diverse families. Families in Society, 75(9), 531–540.	Zimet, G. D., Dahlem, N. W., Zimet, S. G., & Farley, G. K. (1988). The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Journal of Personality Assessment, 52(1), 30–41.
Aliases	Culturagram Assessment, Congress Culturagram, Cultural Assessment Map, Culturagram Family Assessment	Social Support Measurement, Perceived Social Support Assessment, Social Support Network Assessment, Social Support Inventory
Related	4	4
Summary	The culturagram is a visual family-assessment tool that helps social workers understand the influence of culture on a family by placing the family at the center of a diagram surrounded by ten culturally relevant dimensions — from reasons for relocation and legal status to language, health beliefs, holidays, and contact with cultural institutions. Created by Elaine Congress in 1994, it individualizes families who might otherwise be stereotyped by ethnicity, makes cultural context explicit and discussable, and is used to both assess and empower culturally diverse families.	Social support assessment is the systematic appraisal of the people and resources a client can draw on, the kinds of support they provide, and how adequate that support feels relative to the client's needs. Drawing on the structural-functional theory of support and on validated instruments such as the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, it gives social workers a structured way to map who is in a client's network, what emotional, instrumental, informational, and appraisal support those ties offer, and where gaps leave the client vulnerable — information that is central to strengths-based intervention and care planning.