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

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versus withdrawn subgroups of low-accepted children, with the
withdrawn subgroup reporting more loneliness and social dissatisfaction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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