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Perceptions of Friendship Among Youth with Distressed Friends

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Abstract

This cross-sectional study examined the relationship between a friend’s level of internalizing distress and the focal child’s perceptions of friendship amongst 5th, 8th, and 11th grade youth. Participants completed the Youth Self-Report to assess internalizing distress and measures assessing perceptions of friendship quality, social support, and self-disclosure within reciprocal, same-sex friendship dyads. Results indicated that youth with friends experiencing low levels of internalizing distress reported poorer friendship quality and decreased levels of social support and self-disclosure within the friendship compared to youth with friends experiencing average or high internalizing distress. In a second set of analyses controlling for the focal child’s own internalizing symptoms, gender, and age, friend’s level of internalizing distress remained a significant, unique predictor of target participants’ self-disclosure about their own problems within the friendship. The findings suggest that a mild degree of internalizing distress may enhance, rather than harm, friendships amongst youth.

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Notes

  1. Friendships in which one or both members of dyad starred each other (n = 390) were compared to friendships in which both members of the dyad only circled each other (n = 69). Starred friendships did not differ from non starred friendships for focal child’s internalizing adjustment, reciprocated friend’s internalizing adjustment, or focal child’s ratings of negative friendship quality (all ps > .21). However, focal children in starred friendships reported higher positive friendship quality (t = 3.87, p < .001), social support importance (t = 2.29, p < .05), social support frequency (t = 2.69, p < .01), self-disclosure about friends’ problems (t = 3.08, p < .01), and self-disclosure about own problems (t = 3.00, p < .01) than did focal children in nonstarred friendships. Several steps were taken to assess the appropriateness of aggregating starred and nonstarred reciprocated friendships in analyses. First, the ANOVAs conducted to address the first aim of the study were conducted separately for starred and nonstarred friendships. For the starred friendships, the pattern of findings was identical to those reported. For nonstarred friendships, the differences between low-, average-, and high-friend-distressed groupings were nonsignificant, perhaps due to the limited power available for these analyses (n = 69). However, an examination of the means revealed a nearly identical pattern to the reported findings with one exception: among nonstarred friendships, focal children with a low-distressed friend reported slightly higher positive friendship quality (M = 3.30) than did focal children with an average-distressed friend (M = 3.15) and focal children with a high-distressed friend (M = 3.13). Next, the hierarchical regressions conducted to address the second aim of the study were replicated. In these analyses, an interaction term between friendship status (i.e., starred vs. nonstarred) and friends’ internalizing adjustment was included as the third step. None of the friendship status X friends’ internalizing adjustment terms significantly predicted the indices of friendship quality, social support, or self-disclosure (all ps > .26). Taken as a whole, these findings support our decision to aggregate starred and nonstarred friendships for primary analyses.

  2. To reduce data redundancy, a separate set of analyses was conducted using a reduced data set in which each participant was included as either the focal child or the best friend (but not both). This reduced dataset included data for 180 unique reciprocal friendships. Analysis of this reduced dataset yielded an identical pattern of findings to the reported results with one exception. In step 3 of the hierarchical regression predicting focal children’s perceptions of self-disclosure about own problems from self-reported internalizing distress (step 1), friends’ distress (step 2), and age and gender (step 3) the unique effect of friends’ internalizing distress approached but did not reach statistical significance (β = .14, p = .07 in the reduced dataset compared to β = .10, p < .05 in the full dataset).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Suffolk University, Boston, MA, 02114, USA

    Erin N. Hill & Lance P. Swenson

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  1. Erin N. Hill
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  2. Lance P. Swenson
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Correspondence to Erin N. Hill.

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Hill, E.N., Swenson, L.P. Perceptions of Friendship Among Youth with Distressed Friends. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 45, 99–109 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-013-0381-y

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