Friendship and Friendship Quality in Middle Childhood ... - Psychology

Developmental Psychology
1993, Vol. 29, No. 4,611-621
Copyright 1993 bv the American Psychological Association, Inc.
O012-1649/93/$3.O0
Friendship and Friendship Quality in Middle Childhood: Links With Peer
Group Acceptance and Feelings of Loneliness and Social Dissatisfaction
Jeffrey G. Parker and Steven R. Asher
The distinction between friendship adjustment and acceptance by the peer group was examined.
Third- through 5th-grade children (N= 881) completed sociometric measures of acceptance and
friendship, a measure of loneliness, a questionnaire on the features of their very best friendships,
and a measure of their friendship satisfaction. Results indicated that many low-accepted children
had best friends and were satisfied with these friendships. However, these children's friendships
were lower than those of other children on most dimensions of quality. Having a friend, friendship
quality, and group acceptance made separate contributions to the prediction of loneliness. Results
indicate the utility of the new friendship quality measure and the value of distinguishing children's
friendship adjustment from their general peer acceptance.
Researchers have made considerable progress in understanding
the emergence, maintenance, and consequences of acceptance
versus rejection by the peer group (see Asher & Coie,
1990, for reviews). Although group acceptance is an important
facet of children's successful adaptation to peers, greater attention
is needed to children's ability to form and maintain satisfying
and supportive specific dyadic friendships as distinct from
their ability to gain acceptance in the classroom more generally.
Indeed, several authors (e.g., Blyth, 1983; Bukowski & Hoza,
1989; Furman & Robbins, 1985) argued that problems in group
acceptance do not necessarily preclude satisfactory friendship
adjustment, and they pointed out that concerns about the emotional
well-being of low-accepted children might be attenuated
if it could be established that low-accepted children have satisfying
one-to-one friendships. To date, however, children's friendship
adjustment has been studied far less frequently and less
systematically than children's group acceptance, and the links
Jeffrey G. Parker, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign; Steven R. Asher, Bureau of Educational Research,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
This article is based on a doctoral dissertation carried out by Jeffrey
G. Parker in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign. Portions of this article were presented at the
annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association,
Boston, in April 1990.
The research reported in this article was supported by National Institute
of Child Health and Human Development Training Grant
HD07205, by an American Psychological Association Dissertation
Fellowship to Jeffrey G. Parker, and by a research grant to Steven R.
Asher from the W T. Grant Foundation.
We express our deepest appreciation to the students, teachers, and
principals of Bottenfield, Carrie Busey, Ben Franklin, Dr. Howard,
Thomas Paine, and Robeson Elementary Schools. Without the considerable
cooperation and support of everyone involved, this research
would not have been possible. We also thank Carol Rockhill and Kathleen
Zelis for their help with data collection and Ben Wallace for developing
a program to calculate reciprocal sociometric nominations.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jeffrey
G. Parker, who is now at Department of Psychology, University of
Michigan, 3433 Mason Hall, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1027.
611
between these two forms of peer adjustment are poorly understood.
Although little consensus exists as yet regarding the most
appropriate means of assessing friendship success or adjustment,
several reviews (e.g., Berndt, 1984; Bukowski & Hoza,
1989) suggested that two different elements of friendship adjustment
could be examined. The first is the extent of a child's
participation in friendship, that is, whether or not the child has
an acknowledged, mutual friendship with another child. The
second is the quality of a child's best friendship, that is, the
degree of companionship the relationship provides, its supportiveness,
and its level of conflict.
One can gauge the first element—children's participation in
friendship—in school settings by identifying reciprocal choices
among the patterns of nominations children give in response to
questions about who their best friends are (see Berndt, 1984).
Studies of this type have documented differences in participation
in friendship as a function of gender, classroom and school
structure, age, and several other variables (see Epstein, 1986, for
a review). Moreover, recent research has documented the existence
of important behavioral and social-cognitive differences
between children involved in mutual friendships and children
without mutual friendships (Carlson-Jones & Bowling, 1988;
Howes, 1988; Mannarino, 1976; McGuire & Weisz, 1982; Roopnarine&
Field, 1984).
To date, however, it is unclear how participation in friendship
varies as a function of group acceptance. In studying the
relationship between friendship and acceptance, one must have
clearly distinct measures of each dimension. As Bukowski and
Hoza (1989) pointed out, certain commonly used sociometric
measures of acceptance actually confound acceptance with
friendship. This occurs particularly when group acceptance is
assessed with sociometric nomination procedures, which typically
require children to indicate their best friends or children
they like most within a particular group (often only three
choices are allowed). The number of nominations children receive
is then taken as their level of acceptance, or these positive
nominations are used in combination with negative nominations
to identify poorly-accepted children. Although nomina-

612 JEFFREY G. PARKER AND STEVEN R. ASHER
tion measures are highly valid for certain research questions,
when limited-choice positive nominations are used to assess
peer acceptance, certain interpretative problems arise. When
friendship is the explicit criterion (e.g., "Name your three best
friends"), error is likely to be introduced, because children will
fail to nominate other children who they actually like or accept
but do not view as a best friend. Even when friendship is not the
explicit criterion (e.g., "Name three children you like most"),
there is still a problem. Because children are restricted in the
number of choices they can make, they are likely to limit their
choices to their best friends. Moreover, by allowing only a limited
number of choices, information is missing about how children
feel about most of the children in their classroom.
A conceptually clearer approach would be for one to use
reciprocal friendship-nomination sociometric measures to assess
friendship and to use a "roster-and-rating scale" sociometric
measure of liking to assess children's overall acceptance by
their peers (for early steps in this direction, see Asher, Singleton,
& Taylor, 1982; Oden & Asher. 1977). Reciprocal friendship
nominations provide face-valid indicators of friendship (see
Bukowski & Hoza, 1989), and rating-scale measures of acceptance
provide complete information about how much each
child likes every other child in the group (Asher & Hymel,
1981). For rating-scale measures to serve this purpose, it is important
that children be asked to rate how much they like or
like to play with every other classmate, rather than be asked to
rate how much they view every other child as a friend.
One aim of the present research was to evaluate differences
in the prevalence of friendship among low- average- and highaccepted
children. Of particular interest was whether many
low-accepted children, despite their low overall status, nonetheless
have best friends. Although several studies contain information
about this issue (Berghout-Austin, 1985; Bukowski,
Hoza, & Newcomb, 1987; Buzzelli, 1988; Drewry & Clark,
1984; Feltham, Doyle, Schwartzman, Serbin, & Ledingham,
1985; Howes, 1988; Mannarino, 1976; Rizzo, 1988; Roopnarine
& Field, 1984), none of the research combines reciprocal nomination
measures of friendship with rating-scale measures of
acceptance.
A second aim of the present research was to develop an instrument
for assessing children's perceptions of the qualitative
features of their best friendships. A third, related aim was to
examine how the qualities of accepted children's friendships
differ from the qualities of low-accepted children's friendships.
Several studies have examined age and gender differences in
the quality of children's friendships by obtaining from children
estimates of the extent to which their friendships meet certain
relationship needs (Berndt & Perry, 1986; Buhrmester & Furman,
1987; Bukowski et al., 1987; Furman & Buhrmester, 1985;
Sharabany, Gershoni, & Hofman, 1981). In this research, there
is general consistency across studies concerning the qualitative
aspects of friendship that are important to consider (see Asher
& Parker, 1989). These include (a) the extent to which the relationship
offers children opportunities for play, companionship,
and recreation; (b) the degree of intimate disclosure and exchange
that characterizes the relationship; (c) the extent to
which the friends share, help, and guide one another; and (d) the
extent to which children find the relationship validating and
enhancing of self-worth.
In existing research on individual differences in friendship
quality, researchers have sometimes also considered the types
of stress as well as support present in children's friendships (e.g.,
Berndt & Perry, 1986; Bukowski et al., 1987). For example,
Berndt and Perry found that conflict and disagreement are
common in children's close friendships (see also Gottman,
1983) and, at least among older children, are independent of
the level of positive, supportive aspects of friendship. A distinction
needs to be made, however, between the level of conflict
children experience and the ease and manner with which their
conflicts are resolved. Several investigators have found that it is
the ability to resolve conflicts quickly and amicably, not the
ability to avoid conflict altogether, that distinguishes close peer
relationships from other peer relationships in early childhood
(Gottman & Parkhurst, 1980; Hartup & Laursen, 1989; Vespo
&Caplan, 1988). Other authors (e.g., Carlson-Jones, 1985; Hartup
& Laursen, 1989) have reported similar findings with respect
to the friendships of older, school-age children. The
amount of conflict children experience and the ease and readiness
with which conflict is resolved represent, therefore, somewhat
distinct dimensions.
The nature of the link between acceptance by the peer group
and the quality of children's friendships is virtually unexplored.
Scholars of personal relationships caution against being too
ready to make inferences about the properties of dyadic relationships
from measures of an individual's group functioning
and behavior. Hinde (1979), Hartup (1986), Sroufe (e.g., Sroufe
& Fleeson, 1986), Furman (1984a, 1984b), and others have
noted that behavior in dyadic relationships is always the product
of a complex, idiosyncratic interaction among the personal
characteristics of an individual, the personal characteristics of
his or her partner, and the relationship's history and circumstances.
Furthermore, friendships, like all other personal relationships,
have emergent properties, such as role expectations
and obligations, that can mute, alter, or amplify an individual's
personality characteristics or typical patterns of behavior.
On the other hand, a number of behavioral and social skills
deficits have been shown to distinguish children who are rejected
by their peer group from better-accepted children (see
Asher & Coie, 1990); these deficits could be expected to contribute
to problems in functioning between low-accepted children
and their friends. Furthermore, several studies (e.g., Buzzelli,
1988; Gottman, Gonso, & Rasmussen, 1975; Kurdek & Krile,
1982) have shown that unpopular children reason in less sophisticated
ways about friendship and friendship-related issues
than other children (but see Bichard, Alden, Walker, & McMahon,
1988, for an exception).
In the present study, we compared high- average- and lowaccepted
children on the qualities of their best friendships. Specifically,
we examined whether the friendships of poorly-accepted
children differed from better-accepted children with
respect to six qualitative aspects: validation and caring (i.e., the
degree to which the relationship is characterized by caring, support,
and interest); conflict and betrayal (i.e., the extent to which
the relationship is typified by argument, disagreement, annoyance,
and mistrust); companionship and recreation (i.e., the extent
to which the friends spend enjoyable time together inside
or outside of school); help and guidance (i.e., the extent of the
friends' efforts to assist one another with routine or challenging

FRIENDSHIP AND FRIENDSHIP QUALITY
tasks); intimate exchange (i.e., the extent to which the relationship
is characterized by disclosure of personal information and
feelings); and conflict resolution (i.e., the degree to which disagreements
in the relationship are resolved efficiently and
fairly). In addition, we compared high-, average-, and low-accepted
children with respect to the level of satisfaction they
expressed with their best friendship. We included a satisfaction
measure, because children of different levels of acceptance
might report similar amounts of satisfaction even though there
are differences in the specific qualities they perceive in their
friendships. 1
A fourth aim of the present research was to examine children's
friendship adjustment in relation to children's feelings of
loneliness and social dissatisfaction. The link between friendship
adjustment and loneliness has been the subject of considerable
theorizing but little empirical inquiry. Sullivan (1953) drew
specific attention to the putative links between friendship and
loneliness, ascribing special significance to preadolescent
friendship as a means of staving off feelings of loneliness and
isolation. Over the past several years, considerable progress has
been made in the reliable measurement of loneliness in children
(see Asher, Parkhurst, Hymel, & Williams, 1990), and
loneliness has been found to be correlated with low group acceptance
or rejection as measured by sociometric ratings or a
combination of positive and negative sociometric nominations
(e.g., Asher, Hymel, & Renshaw, 1984; Asher & Wheeler, 1985;
Cassidy & Asher, 1992; Crick & Ladd, 1993). Dyadic friendships
were not assessed in these studies, however. Therefore, it
remains to be seen whether friendship bears a similarly strong
relationship to loneliness or whether the apparent relation between
loneliness and acceptance might be accounted for by
differences in the friendship adjustment of accepted and unaccepted
children. Furthermore, it is of theoretical and practical
interest to learn whether having a friend has positive emotional
benefits for low-accepted children who might otherwise report
high levels of loneliness. Such a possibility is suggested by Bukowski
et al. (1987), who focused on friendship adjustment,
acceptance, and children's feelings of general self-worth and
perceived cognitive and social competence.
In summary, the specific aims of the present research were (a)
to examine the prevalence of mutual friendship among children
in general and among low-accepted children in particular;
(b) to develop a new measure of friendship quality; (c) to compare
friendships of accepted and low-accepted children in
terms of specific qualitative features and with respect to children's
satisfaction with their friendships; and (d) to examine
how acceptance, having a friend, and the quality of one's best
friendship are related to the degree of loneliness and social
dissatisfaction in middle childhood.
Subjects
Method
Eight hundred and eighty-one children were recruited from 36 thirdthrough
fifth-grade classrooms of five public elementary schools located
in a mid-sized, midwestern community in the United States. The
participants represented 98.5% of all children enrolled in these
classrooms (13 children were excluded at parental request). Two
hundred and ninety-six children (163 boys and 133 girls) were in the
613
third grade, 251 children (135 boys and 116 girls) were in the fourth
grade, and 334 children (174 boys and 160 girls) were in the fifth grade.
The sample was 73.2% White, 23.4% Black, and 3.4% Asian or Hispanic.
All children completed all measures. However, for certain analyses
(see the following sections) only children (« = 484) with at least one
mutual, very best friend were of interest. The distribution of gender
and grade for this subsample of friended children was as follows: 154
third graders (71 boys and 83 girls), 141 fourth graders (68 boys and 73
girls), and 189 fifth graders (95 boys and 94 girls).
Measures
Level of acceptance. We used a "roster-and-rating" sociometric
procedure (Singleton & Asher, 1977) to assess children's level of
classroom acceptance. Children were provided with rosters of all classmates
and were asked to indicate on a l-to-5 rating scale how much
they liked to play with each of their classmates. A child's level of acceptance
was determined from the average rating received from his or her
classmates, standardized within gender within each classroom. Children
were classified as high-accepted (n = 65 boys and 63 girls) if their
received rating z score was greater than or equal to 1. Children were
classified as low-accepted (n = 74 boys and 76 girls) if their z score was
less than or equal to -1. The remaining children (n = 333 boys and 269
girls) were classified as average-accepted. The high-accepted and lowaccepted
groups represented the highest 14.5% and lowest 17% of the
sample in terms of acceptance, respectively.
Friendship assessments. Children's friendships were identified by
using data from a two-step sociometric nomination procedure. In the
first step, children were asked to indicate their three "best friends"
from a roster of the names of all other children in their class. In the
second step, children were then asked to review their three choices and
to indicate which of the three choices represented their single, "very
best friend." We then examined the choice matrix within each
classroom to identify children who nominated each other. 2 Children
were considered to have a very best friend if the classmate they designated
as their very best friend in turn included them among his or her
' We are indebted to Carol Dweck for suggesting an independent
assessment of children's friendship satisfaction.
2 An issue that arises concerns the appropriateness of restricting
friendship choices to within classrooms. It is possible that children
who differ in acceptance also differ in their tendency to have a friend
outside the classroom and that restricting friendship nominations to
within the class could underestimate the friendship status of certain
groups. In a previous study, we reported the results of a direct appraisal
of this possibility using a sample of 278 elementary school-age children
(Parker & Asher, 1989). In that study, before children completed
any other sociometric measure, they were asked to write the names of
their three very best friends. The children were told that these friends
could live anywhere but should be other children and not adults. The
number of friends listed who were not class members was tallied for
each child. On average, children included just under one (M = 0.90)
nonclassmate on this list of friends. A Gender X Level of Acceptance
analysis of variance indicated no significant main effects or interaction.
Thus, high-accepted, average-accepted, and low-accepted children
did not differ in the number of nonclassmates they included.
Because these nominations were of children outside the classroom, it
was not possible to verify whether friendships were actually reciprocal
relationships. But the important finding is that whatever underestimation
of friendship does take place by restricting friendship assessment
to the classroom seems to be limited and not particularly biased toward
one acceptance group or another.

614 JEFFREY G. PARKER AND STEVEN R. ASHER
list of three best-friend choices. In other words, it was not necessary
that the chosen classmate designate the choosing child as a very best
friend (as opposed to a best friend) in order for the choosing child to be
considered to have a very best friend, although this strict reciprocity
held for 266 (55%) of the 484 cases of children who were identified as
having a very best friend. 3
In addition to this primary operationalization of friendship, a second,
more inclusive criterion for friendship was established. For this
second operationalization, children's "very best" designations were
ignored. Thus, best (as opposed to very best) friendship was defined as a
reciprocity across children for any of their three best-friend nominations.
Unlike the more restrictive primary criterion, then, children
could have more than one (but no more than three) best friendships by
this criterion. We felt that this supplemental operationalization of
friendship was essential to a comprehensive appraisal of children's participation
in friendship. It also was of interest by virtue of being more
directly comparable with operationalizations used in past studies.
Friendship quality We examined the quality of children's very best
friendship by using a questionnaire designed to assess children's perceptions
of various qualitative aspects of their very best friendship.
This questionnaire, the Friendship Quality Questionnaire (FQQ). contained
40 primary items and an initial "warm-up" item. The items
asked children to indicate on a 5-point scale how true a particular
quality is of their relationship with a specific friend (e.g., "Jamie and I
loan each other things all the time"). The scale ranged from not at all
true (0) to a little true (1) to somewhat true (2) to pretty true (3) to really
true (4). The child completed the questionnaire with reference to a
specific friend, whose name was inserted at the top of the questionnaire
and embedded in each individual item by using a personal computer
and word-processing software with data-merging capabilities.
This reference to a specific friend was done to discourage children
from completing the questionnaire on the basis of an internal representation
of a stereotypic or idealized friendship or based on a mental
composite of several different friendships. The target friend was the
child's very best mutual friend as determined from the sociometric
assessment described earlier. 4 The questionnaire was group administered
in the child's classroom. We began administration by giving children
instruction in using the scale. After this, children completed the
questionnaire individually. Each item was read aloud to make as few
demands as possible on children's reading ability.
The FQQ evolved over time through two administrations and appraisals
before the present study. An initial pool of potential items was
derived from a similar questionnaire developed by Bukowski et al.
(1987). 5 We made some changes to the wording and response format of
these initial items to clarify potential ambiguities in interpretation. In
addition, the practice of customizing each questionnaire with the
name of a specific friend was introduced. The FQQ was administered
initially to 278 third- through sixth-grade children (see Parker &Asher,
1989) and subsequently to 153 third- through fifth-grade children. We
used each evaluation to identify and replace weak or ambiguous items
and to clarify the underlying factor structure. These evaluations resulted
in the final pool of 40 items used in the present study and are
shown in Table 1. The scoring and the derivation of subscales are described
in the Results section.
Friendship satisfaction. Two questions were used to assess children's
satisfaction with their friendship. These questions were administered
separately from the FQQ. The first question asked, "How is this
friendship going?" The second question asked, "How happy are you
with this friendship?" For both questions, children indicated theirsatisfaction
along a continuum anchored at the low end by a stylized linedrawing
of a frowning, unhappy face and at the opposite, high end by a
complementary stylized line-drawing of a smiling, happy face. Fifteen
evenly spaced ticks were marked along the continuum to assist with
measurement, and a child's score was based on which tick was circled,
with higher scores indicating more satisfaction. To familiarize children
with the use of the scale, we first guided the children through
several examples involving school activities and hobbies. The two
friendship satisfaction questions were then read aloud. The responses
of children with very best friends to the two questions were highly
related (r = .85), and ratings were therefore averaged into a single satisfaction
score for each child.
Loneliness and social dissatisfaction. Children's feelings of loneliness
and social dissatisfaction were assessed by using Asher and
Wheeler's (1985) modification of a 24-item self-report questionnaire
developed by Asher et al. (1984). This questionnaire contains 16 items
focused on feelings of loneliness and social dissatisfaction in school
and 8 filler items. The 16 primary items include four different kinds of
items. These items assessed (a) children's feelings of loneliness (e.g.,
"I'm lonely at school"), (b) children's appraisal of their current peer
relationships (e.g., "I don't have any friends in class"), (c) children's
perceptions of the degree to which important relationship needs are
being met (e.g., "There're no other kids I can go to when I need help at
school"), and (d) children's perceptions of their social competence (e.g.,
"I'm good at working with other children in my class"). Children responded
to each item on a 5-point scale, indicating the degree to which
each statement is a true description of themselves. Total scores could
range from 16 to 80, with greater scores indicating greater loneliness
and social dissatisfaction. This questionnaire has been used in several
studies with elementary school-age children's and has proved to have
excellent internal consistency (Cronbach a > .90; see Asher et al., 1990).
The internal reliability in the present sample was comparable (a = .91).
One limitation of the Asher and Wheeler (1985) measure in the context
of the present study is that a number of its items overlap in content
with items that assess the quality of children's best friendships. This
means that significant correlations could be found between this measure
and items assessing the quality of children's friendships simply
because of the partially overlapping content (see Nicholls, Licht, &
Pearl, 1982, for a discussion of this issue). Accordingly, we constructed
a secondary measure of children's loneliness using a subset of three of
the Asher and Wheeler questionnaire items: "I feel alone at school," "I
feel left out of things at school," and "I'm lonely at school ."This secondary
measure, then, represents a "pure" assessment of children's feel-
3 A small minority of children (n = 3, or less than 1%) failed or refused
to designate one or more friends at the initial step. These children were
excluded from analyses. Another small minority (n = 4, also less than
1 %) indicated one or more friendship choices but failed or refused at the
second step to designate a "very best friend" among the friendship
choices. These children could not be included in analyses requiring
knowledge of their very best friendship. Their data could be used in
other analyses, however, and their choices could be used to examine
the reciprocity of other children's choices. In three additional cases,
children ignored instructions and indicated more than one "very best
friendship" from among the three choices. In these cases, one choice
was randomly designated the very best friendship, within the constraint
that a nonmutual choice could not take precedence over a mutual
choice (one case).
4 For those children without a mutual very best friend, one of the
child's mutual best friendship choices (top three) was substituted. For
children without either type of friendship, the name of the child's unilateral
(i.e., nonreciprocated) very best friend choice was substituted.
These substitutions were necessary to avoid drawing undue attention
during administration to children without mutual very best friends.
Data from subjects without mutual very best friends were excluded
from data analyses concerning the qualities of children's best friendships.
5 We are indebted to William Bukowski and his colleagues for providing
information about the reliability of their items.

Table 1
Items and Subscales of the Friendship Quality Questionnaire
Structure
Subscale/item" coefficient
Validation and Caring (a = .90)
15. Makes me feel good about my ideas
4. Tells me I am good at things
6. Make each other feel important and special
13. Tells me I am pretty smart
8. Says "I'm sorry" if [he/she] hurts my
feelings
5. Sticks up for me if others talk behind my
back
10. Has good ideas about games to play
41. Cares about my feelings
12. Would like me even if others didn't
30. Does not tell others my secrets
Conflict Resolution (a = .73)
26. Make up easily when we have a fight
35. Get over our arguments really quickly
11. Talk about how to get over being mad at
each other
Conflict and Betrayal (a = .84)
20. Argue a lot
27. Fight a lot
3. Get mad a lot
37. Doesn't listen to me
31. Bug each other a lot
9. Sometimes says mean things about me to
other kids
21. Can count on to keep promises
Help and Guidance (a = .90)
34. Helps me so I can get done quicker
39. Help each other with schoolwork a lot
24. Gives advice with figuring things out
36. Count on each other for good ideas on how
to get things done
32. Come up with good ideas on ways to do
things
33. Loan each other things all the time
28. Share things with each other
18. Do special favors for each other
17. Help each other with chores a lot
Companionship and Recreation (a = .75)
2. Always sit together at lunch
7. Always pick each other as partners for things
23. Always play together at recess
19. Do fun things together a lot
22. Go to each others' houses
Intimate Exchange (a = .86)
14. Always tell each other our problems
25. Talk about the things that make us sad
16. Talk to her when I'm mad about something
that happened to me
40. Tell each other secrets
38. Tell each other private things
29. Talk about how to make ourselves feel
better if we are mad at each other
FRIENDSHIP AND FRIENDSHIP QUALITY
.783
.780
.729
.703
.695
.662
.644
.635
.595
.547
.880
.840
.573
.844
.822
.782
.696
.652
.638
.635
.823
.768
.757
.744
.702
.640
.595
.576
.567
.802
.728
.690
.660
.571
.755
.740
.709
.690
.674
.653
a Numbers are item numbers from the Friendship Quality Question-
naire.
ings of loneliness and social dissatisfaction, uncontaminated by their
appraisals of the quality of their friendships, their perception of their
social competence, or their estimate of the state of their current peer
relationships. The internal consistency of this 3-item pure scale was a
615
= .11. The correlation between the pure loneliness scale and the larger,
16-item scale was .84. Whenever loneliness and social dissatisfaction
was analyzed in relation to measures of friendship quality, the 3-item
pure loneliness scale was substituted for the 16-item measure, and this
fact is noted accordingly. For the sake of continuity with other research,
scores for the larger scale were used in analyses in which the possibility
of overlapping content was not an issue (i.e., in analyses that did not
involve friendship quality or friendship satisfaction).
Procedure
In the late fall, the parents of all children in the third through fifth
grades of each participating school were mailed first-class letters describing
the study. Parents were asked to contact either the principal or
the experimenters if they did not want their child to participate or if
they required more information about the study before deciding. Data
collection took place in three sessions in the winter and spring of the
school year. Each session lasted about 1 hr. The first session began with
an introduction to the project and project staff. This introduction
stressed that participation was voluntary and confidential. After this,
we administered sociometric measures to assess peer acceptance and
to identify best friendships. Other measures were also administered in
this session that are not relevant to the present study. In the second
session, approximately 1 month later, the loneliness and social dissatisfaction
questionnaire was administered. In the third session, several
weeks later, children's perception of the quality of their best friendship
was assessed, as was their satisfaction with their friendship. All measures
were group administered in class, and each session was conducted
by a different investigator to minimize reactivity across sessions.
Preliminary Analyses
Results
Preliminary analyses indicated that children's grade level
was not significantly related to any of the independent and
dependent variables under consideration. Furthermore, there
were no instances in which it was necessary to qualify any of the
findings on the basis of grade. However, including grade did
adversely affect the size of some cells in several analyses. For
this reason, the analyses reported here are derived after collapsing
the data across grades.
Prevalence of Friendship
Using the criterion of reciprocated best friendship, 77.6% of
the children in this sample had at least one friend. However, as
noted earlier, 484, or 54.9%, of the 881 children in the sample
had very best friends. Thus, the narrowing of the focus from
best friendship to very best friendship had the impact of doubling
the proportion of friendless children identified (45.1% vs.
22.4%).
Of primary interest was the prevalence of best friendship
among groups of children differing in level of acceptance. We
expected that the likelihood of friendship would increase as
level of acceptance increased but that many low-accepted children
would nevertheless have friends. Logit analysis was used
to model the odds of having versus not having a mutual best
friend as a function of children's gender and level of acceptance.
We evaluated the significance of individual terms (main effects

616 JEFFREY G. PARKER AND STEVEN R. ASHER
and their interaction) by comparing the goodness of fit of the
model that included the term to the goodness of fit of the model
without the term. A backward elimination procedure was used
to arrive at a parsimonious model that fit the data. For cases in
which significant effects were found, we examined adjusted
residuals to assess the effects of membership in particular categories
of the independent variables (i.e., low- vs. average- vs.
high-acceptance). We ran separate analyses for the two distinct
operationalizations of friendship to learn how estimates of the
prevalence of friendship, particularly among low-accepted children,
are affected by changes in the stringency of the criterion.
The first logit analysis, using the looser, best friendship criterion
found a significant effect for children's level of acceptance,
likelihood ratio x 2 (2, N= 881) = 103.64, p< .001. Membership
in the low-accepted group significantly depressed the odds of
having a friend, whereas membership in the high-accepted
group significantly augmented these odds. Specifically, 45.3%
of low-accepted, 82.3% of average-accepted, and 93.8% of highaccepted
children had at least one friend. A main effect of
gender was found, likelihood ratio x 2 (L N = 881) = 7.09, p <
.01: Girls (81.6%) were more likely than boys (74.2%) to have a
friend. The interaction of gender and level of acceptance did
not significantly alter the odds of having versus not having a
friend.
The second logit analysis, using the stringent, very best
friendship criterion, revealed a highly significant effect for children's
level of acceptance, likelihood ratio x 2 (2, N = 881) =
53.10, p < .001, and a nearly significant Gender X Level of
Acceptance interaction, likelihood ratio x 2 (2, N= 881) = 5.26,
p < .07. Membership in the low-accepted group significantly
depressed the odds of having a very best friend, whereas membership
in the high-accepted group significantly augmented
these odds. Whereas 58.27o of average-accepted children and
69.5% of high-accepted children had very best friends, only
29.3% of low-accepted children had very best friends. Furthermore,
whereas the proportion of boys with very best friends
and the proportion of girls with very best friends were roughly
equivalent in both the high- and average-accepted groups
(72.3% vs. 66.7% and 56.2% vs. 60.7%, respectively), low-accepted
girls (39.5%) were twice as likely as low-accepted boys
(18.9%) to have a mutual very best friend. A comparison of
these results with the corresponding results from the earlier
analyses suggests that tightening the friendship criterion is particularly
likely to affect the estimate of the number of low-accepted
boys with friends.
Next, using the more inclusive definition, we examined
whether there were differences in the number of best friends
children had as a function of gender and level of acceptance. A
2 (gender) X 3 (level of acceptance) analysis of variance (AN-
OVA) yielded a highly significant effect for level of acceptance,
F(2,875) = 81.02, p < .0001; a main effect for gender, F(l ,875)
= 10.39, p < .001; and no Gender X Level of Acceptance interaction,
F(2,875) = 0.79, ns. Post hoc (Tukey) comparisons indicated
that low-accepted children had significantly fewer friends
(M = 0.65, SD = 0.82) than average-accepted children (M =
1.50, SD = 0.98), who in turn had significantly fewer friendships
than high-accepted children (M= 2.03, SD = 0.89). Girls
(M = 1.54, SD = 1.01) had significantly more friends than boys
(M= 1.35, SD= 1.02).
Finally, we studied the relationship between the acceptance
levels of very best friends. To accomplish this, we identified all
dyads that met our sociometric criteria for very best friendship
(A r = 351). We then classified each dyad according to the level of
acceptance of the partners. Of the 351 friendships, there were 9
dyads involving 2 low-accepted children, 36 dyads involving a
low-accepted and an average-accepted child, 3 dyads involving
a low-accepted and a high-accepted child, 179 dyads involving 2
average-accepted children, 104 dyads involving an average-accepted
and a high-accepted child, and 20 dyads involving 2
high-accepted children. A one-sample chi-square test revealed
that the observed distribution of configurations departed significantly
from its expected distribution, x 2 (5, N= 351)= 79.23, p
< .0001, given random pairing and the relative frequency of
children in the three acceptance groups. Inspection of the standardized
residuals from this analysis indicated that the principal
reason for this disparity rests with the pattern of low-accepted
children's involvement in friendships. Whereas the number
of low-low friendship dyads was consistent with
expectations (9 observed vs. 10 expected), the number of dyads
involving a low-accepted child with either an average-accepted
or a high-accepted partner was markedly less than the number
expected through random pairing (36 observed vs. 82 expected
and 3 observed vs. 17 expected, respectively). Thus, low-accepted
children's relative lack of involvement in friendships can
be understood as a tendency for lower participation in friendships
with better-accepted children, specifically, and not as an
indiscriminant tendency toward less involvement in friendship.
At the same time, it is important to note that low-accepted
children's involvement in friendship is not restricted to involvement
in dyads with other low-accepted partners. Indeed, the
majority of dyads involving low-accepted children were dyads
involving a low-accepted child and an average-accepted partner
(36 out of 48 dyads, or 75%).
Friendship Quality
Identification of subscales. To identify subscales on the
FQQ, we performed a principal-components analysis (oblique
rotation) on the responses of the 484 children with very best
friends to the 40 primary items in the FQQ. This analysis resulted
in six factors with eigenvalues greater than 1. The six
factors, which were in close agreement with the predicted underlying
structure of the measure based on pilot testing, were
labeled Intimate Exchange, Conflict Resolution, Companionship
and Recreation, Help and Guidance, Validation and Caring,
and Conflict and Betrayal. The rightmost column of Table
1 shows the structure coefficient from the principal-components
analysis for each item in relation to the factor on which it
showed the highest loading.
The principal-components analysis was used to guide the
clustering of items into subscales. Specifically, we formed one
subscale for each factor in the principal-components analysis
by combining the items that loaded highly on each factor. Table
1 displays the Cronbach alpha for these six subscales. As is
evident, the internal consistency of each subscale was satisfactory.
A child's score for each subscale was the average of his or
her ratings for the relevant items (unit weighting), after appropriate
reverse scoring if necessary. The six subscales were mod-

erately to highly intercorrelated, with rs ranging from. 16 to .75
in absolute magnitude. 6 Conflict and Betrayal correlated negatively
with all other subscales. All other subscales were positively
intercorrelated.
Acceptance and friendship quality. The focus of this analysis
was on whether low-accepted children who have mutual very
best friendships have friendships that are of comparable quality
to the friendships of other children. This issue was examined in
a 2 (gender) X 3 (level of acceptance) multivariate analysis of
variance, with the six subscale scores from the FQQ serving as
dependent variables. 7
The results of this analysis yielded a significant multivariate
main effect for gender, F(6, 454) = 4.87, p < .001; a significant
multivariate main effect for level of acceptance, F(l 2, 910) =
3.17, p < .001; and a nonsignificant multivariate Gender X
Level of Acceptance interaction, F(\2, 910) = 1.32. Follow-up
univariate analyses revealed gender differences for four of the
six friendship quality variables. Table 2 gives the mean, standard
deviation, and sample size for each gender on each of the
six friendship quality variables and the corresponding F value
for the gender comparison. Boys and girls did not differ in their
characterizations of their very best friendship with respect to
either conflict and betrayal or companionship and recreation.
However, boys did report less intimate exchange, more difficulty
resolving conflict, less validation and caring, and less
help and guidance in their friendships than did girls.
Follow-up univariate analyses indicated acceptance-level differences
for five of the six friendship quality variables. Table 3
shows these results. The mean, standard deviation, and sample
size for each acceptance group for each friendship quality variable
are also shown in Table 3, along with the ^statistic for each
corresponding comparison and the results of post hoc pairwise
comparisons of means (Tukey).
As shown in Table 3, children of differing levels of acceptance
did not differ significantly with respect to how much
companionship and recreation they saw their friendships as
providing. However, by their reports, low-accepted children's
friendships were less adequate than the friendships of other
children in every other respect. Low-accepted children reported
significantly less validation and caring, more difficulty
resolving conflict, and less help and guidance than both highaccepted
and average-accepted children, who did not differ
from one another in these respects. Low-accepted children also
reported significantly less intimate disclosure in their friendships
than high-accepted children. Low-accepted children reported
more conflict and betrayal in their friendships than did
average-accepted children but not more conflict and betrayal
than high-accepted children, although the means were in that
direction. High-accepted children reported somewhat more
conflict and betrayal than average-accepted children, but this
difference was not significant. Finally, it is of interest that lowaccepted
children showed the greatest variability of any group
on every friendship quality, except conflict and betrayal (see the
standard deviations in Table 3).
Acceptance, Friendship Quality, and Friendship
Satisfaction
In general, children with very best friends expressed relatively
high satisfaction with these relationships. Low-accepted
FRIENDSHIP AND FRIENDSHIP QUALITY
617
children (M= 11.95, SD = 4.28) reported slightly less friendship
satisfaction than did either average-accepted (M = 13.04, SD =
3.07) or high-accepted (M= 13.19, SD = 3.04) children. However,
these differences were not significant, F(2, 458) = 1.89.
Boys tended to express more satisfaction (M = 13.28, SD = 2.82)
with their very best friendships than girls (M = 12.65, SD =
3.52), but this difference did not reach significance, F(l, 458) =
3.35, p < .07. The Gender X Acceptance Level interaction was
not significant, F(2, 458) = 2.04.
Correlations computed between each of the friendship quality
subscales and the satisfaction composite indicated that positive
friendship qualities (i.e., validation and caring, companionship
and recreation, help and guidance, and intimate exchange)
were associated with higher satisfaction with the relationship,
whereas perceptions of conflict and betrayal were associated
with lower satisfaction. These correlations ranged in absolute
magnitude from .35 to .52 and were highly similar across the
three acceptance groups. 8 All correlations were statistically significant
(p < .01). A multiple regression analysis with satisfaction
regressed simultaneously on the six friendship quality subscales
indicated that the six friendship quality variables accounted
for 46% of the variance in satisfaction, R = .68, F(6,
452) = 65.01,/?< .0001. 9
Friendship Adjustment, Acceptance, and Loneliness
Sociometric ratings of acceptance were negatively correlated
with loneliness, r = -.39, p < .001, for the entire sample. This
correlation is consistent with past research (see Asher et al.,
1990). We performed a Friendship Status (friended vs. friend-
6
A table of these correlations is available on request from Jeffrey G.
Parker.
7
In these and subsequent analyses of friendship quality, all children's
responses were included as long as the child was a participant in a very
best friendship. We assume that the perceptions of the individual children,
and not the dyad itself, are the appropriate unit of analysis in this
context. Thus, ratings by 2 children of the same friendship are considered
separate data points. As a precaution against violations of the
independence of the data, however, we repeated all analyses in the
present study involving friendship quality after eliminating any possibility
of dependencies across subjects. Specifically, there were 133
friendships (involving 266 children) in which potential dependencies
in the data existed (i.e., where both partners contributed data on
friendship quality). For these pairs, the data of one member of the dyad
were randomly dropped from statistical analyses, with the qualification
that in mixed-acceptance group pairs involving an average-accepted
child with either a high-accepted child or a low-accepted child,
the high-accepted or low-accepted child was preferentially retained to
maximize the sample sizes of these extreme groups. Analyses were
then rerun on the new, reduced data set (A' = 484 - 133 = 351). These
reanalyses resulted in no qualifications concerning significant versus
nonsignificant effects.
8
A table of these correlations is available on request from Jeffrey G.
Parker.
9
Although the regression analysis provided information about the
beta weights for each of the friendship quality variables, comparisons
among these betas would be misleading because the existence of substantial
correlations between these variables resulted in multicollinearity
and mutual suppression among the predictors in the multivariate
context.

618 JEFFREY G. PARKER AND STEVEN R. ASHER
Table 2
Comparisons of Boys and Girls on Friendship Quality Variables
Variable
Validation and caring
Conflict and betrayal
Companionship and
recreation
Help and guidance
Intimate exchange
Conflict resolution
n
230
232
231
232
231
231
Girls
M
2.85
1.04
2.71
2.54
2.47
2.95
*p

Table 4
Summary of Hierarchical Regressions of
Friendship Qualities on "Pure" Loneliness
Quality
Validation and caring
Conflict and betrayal
Companionship and
recreation
Help and guidance
Intimate exchange
Conflict resolution
r
-.29
.18
-.26
-.26
-.19
-.29
-.262
.160
-.250
-.229
-.175
-.276
FRIENDSHIP AND FRIENDSHIP QUALITY
•^change
.07
.03
.06
.05
.03
.07
F( 1,455)
34.26**
12.84*
32.57**
26.21**
14.03*
38.77**
* Controlling for gender, sociometric rating, and Gender X Sociometric
Rating interaction.
*p -.222; all ps < .0001). Again,
neither gender nor the interaction terms involving gender, acceptance
by peers, or friendship quality significantly predicted
loneliness in any regression.
Discussion
The present data suggest that the distinction between acceptance
and friendship adjustment is a meaningful one and
should be preserved. With respect to the prevalence of friendships,
for example, we found that not all highly accepted children
had friends, even when the focus was on best as opposed to
very best friendship. Indeed, just under a third of high-accepted
children did not have the child they named as their very
best friend include them among his or her list of three friends.
Conversely, many, although certainly not most, low-accepted
children did have friends. Relaxing the criteria for identifying a
dyad as friends led to many more children at all levels of acceptance
identified as having friends, especially low-accepted
boys. Thus, it would be incorrect to characterize all low-accepted
children as children without friends.
Similarly, the analyses involving children's reports of loneliness
and social dissatisfaction indicated that children's friendship
adjustment had an influence on children's feelings of loneliness
above and beyond the influence of peer group acceptance,
further supporting the distinction between friendship
adjustment and group acceptance. Two different sets of findings
support this point. First, children without best friends
were more lonely than children with best friends, and this was
true regardless of how well accepted they were. Thus, an addi-
619
tive relationship between acceptance and friendship obtained
with respect to loneliness. Second, the regression analyses that
focused on the qualities of children's best friendships indicated
that friendship quality and acceptance contributed separately
and about equally to the prediction of loneliness. Together,
these findings suggest that children's feelings of loneliness can
arise from several sources that, in combination, can seriously
undermine children's feelings of well-being. Receiving poor acceptance
by peers, lacking a friend, or having a friendship that
fails to meet important relationship needs each contribute. (See
Weiss, 1973, for a related discussion in the literature on loneliness
in adulthood.)
Although results of the present study support the distinction
between group acceptance and friendship, the extent of the
connection between children's adjustment in the two domains
should not be minimized. Better-accepted children were more
likely to be involved in specific dyadic friendships than were
less-accepted children. Indeed, high-accepted and average-accepted
children were about twice as likely to have a very best
friend as low-accepted children. This disparity was large for
girls but was especially large for boys; fewer than 1 in 5 low-accepted
boys had very best friends.
Likewise, analyses involving the new measure of friendship
quality pointed to important differences between low-accepted,
average-accepted, and high-accepted children's friendships
with respect to validation and caring, help and guidance,
conflict resolution, intimate exchange, and conflict and
betrayal. Low-accepted children's very best friendships were
more problematic in each of these respects than the friendships
of other children.
The development of a self-report instrument for assessing
children's perceptions is another contribution of this research.
The friendship quality measure contains subscales with good
internal consistency indicating that children can reliably describe
features of their close peer relationships. In addition to
the several differences noted for low-accepted versus better-accepted
children, results from the friendship quality measure
also yielded interesting information about gender in relation to
friendship quality. Whereas two dimensions of friendship quality
did not distinguish boys' and girls' friendships from one
another (i.e., conflict and betrayal, companionship and recreation),
girls reported higher levels than boys of validation and
support, help and guidance, conflict resolution, and intimate
exchange. These findings are consistent with the findings of
most (e.g., Buhrmester & Furman, 1987; Furman & Buhrmester,
1985; Sharabany et al., 1981) but not all (e.g., Berndt & Perry,
1986) past studies that have compared boys' and girls' friendships.
Research is needed on the factors that give rise to these
gender differences. One suggestion has been that differences in
the play preferences and group structures of boys and girls (e.g.,
the greater tendency for boys to play in large groups and for
their groups to be hierarchically organized) give rise to differences
in the qualities of their close personal relationships (see
Maccoby, 1990). To date, however, this hypothesis has not received
empirical scrutiny or support.
A further point about friendship quality concerns the heterogeneity
within the low-accepted group. This group showed the
largest within-group variability of all groups on five of the six
qualities. An important task for future research will be to docu-

620 JEFFREY G. PARKER AND STEVEN R. ASHER
merit and account for cases in which low-accepted children
have friendships that are not dissimilar from those of other
children. Recent research suggests the existence of aggressive
versus withdrawn subgroups of low-accepted children, with the
withdrawn subgroup reporting more loneliness and social dissatisfaction
(Parkhurst&Asher, 1992; Williams &Asher, 1987).
Attention to these subgroups might also reveal differences in
the quality of their friendships.
Friendship quality was assessed in this research through the
reports of the children themselves. There is much to recommend
this way of assessing the properties of friendship (see
Furman, 1984b). It is particularly useful when the qualities
under study are infrequent and difficult to observe, as is the
case for many of the qualities of friendship under study here
(e.g., conflict and betrayal, intimacy), or when it is the subjective
impact of behavior (such as a personal feeling of validation) that
is of most interest. At the same time, relying on children's reports
also poses certain important interpretative challenges to
understanding children's friendship experiences. To begin
with, because there are two parties to the relationship, friendships
have two subjective realities rather than one (Furman,
1984b), and these may not always coincide. To illustrate, as
noted earlier (see Footnote 7), for a subset (n = 133) of the reciprocal
very best friendships in our sample, data on friendship
quality were available from both partners. For these pairs,
correlations between each partner's ratings ranged from .64 for
companionship and recreation to .21 for conflict resolution,
indicating considerable differences in the opinions of partners.
Such differences may be due to real differences in the partners'
experiences in the relationship. But, just as important, they
may signal that the dyad has not progressed far toward a shared
understanding of the meaning of each other's behavior. In future
research, the concordance of the partners' perspectives on
the relationship might be studied more systematically as a window
on the quality of children's friendships.
Studies that rely on children's reports about their friendships
also must allow that children's construals of their relationships
do not represent objective accounts of their actual social interaction.
It would be desirable in future research to supplement
children's reports of their friendship's qualities with observational
data on how qualities such as intimate disclosure, conflict
resolution, help and guidance, and so on are expressed in
the context of accepted and unaccepted children's interactions
with their very best friends. Doubtless, further differences in
the friendships of highly accepted and poorly accepted children
will be observed.
The emphasis given to children's feelings of loneliness and
social dissatisfaction in relation to friendship adjustment and
peer acceptance in the present study is in keeping with the
increasing interest within developmental psychology in the intersection
of affect and social adjustment (Thompson, 1990).
Moreover, because loneliness is already a well-established concommitant
of problems of group acceptance, it represents a
particularly good initial criterion against which to judge the
magnitude of the predictive validity of measures of friendship
and friendship quality in children. However, future research
should consider the divergent as well as the convergent correlates
of friendship adjustment and peer acceptance. For the
most part, scholars who have stressed the importance of posi-
tive peer experiences in childhood have not sharply differentiated
between the benefits associated with friendship as opposed
to general peer acceptance. Thus, considerable conceptual
groundwork remains to be established. However, as
Furman and Robbins (1985) have compellingly argued, it seems
reasonable that friendship and group acceptance would contribute
in distinctive ways to children's socialization. The close,
accepting context of friendship, for example, may permit children
greater latitude in the behavior that they explore and the
attitudes that they express. In addition, the voluntary nature of
friendship may make it an extremely important context for understanding
the skills and requirements of commitment, personal
responsibility, and loyalty. And friendships may meet specific
needs of children, including needs for intimacy, social support,
instrumental aid, and a reliable ally. On the other hand,
peer acceptance may be an important prerequisite for and outgrowth
of children's leadership and assertive skills and may
meet children's needs to feel that they are a part of a larger
community, something that a particular friendship relationship
is less likely to provide.
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Received May 8,1991
Revision received June 10,1992
Accepted August 19,1992 •