SCIENTIA
2008
The Journal of the Honors Program
About the Author
Lauren Fischer is receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology with a concentration in
Clinical Practices. After her graduation, she plans to attend Fordham University for a Professional
Diploma in School Psychology. She would like to one day work as a school psychologist and/or a
professor in a university completing research with students. She was treasurer of Psi Chi the
National Honor Society in Psychology for the 2006-2007 academic year and she was also
inducted into Delta Epsilon Sigma, the National Honor Society for Catholic Universities. During
the 2007-2008 academic year, she was president of Psi Chi and secretary of the Psychology Club.
She was also inducted into Kappa Gamma Pi and presented research at the Eastern Psychological
Conference in Boston, MA. Lauren would like to thank Sister Gail Cabral for all of her help with
her thesis. She would also like to thank the other professors in the Psychology Department who
have been excellent teachers over the past four years. Lastly, Lauren would like to thank her
parents for supporting her and always being there for her.
Friendship Maintenance: Factors Contributing to Changes
in Friendships of First Year College Students
Lauren Fischer
Abstract
In the present study, the a Social Network Grid, a Propinquity Questionnaire, the Friendship
Maintenance Scale, and the Friendship Qualities Scale were all completed to assess why high
school best friendships are sometimes terminated when high school ends. Two-hundred one (153
female, 45 male) students participated in Study 1 and 23 (21 female, 2 male) of the original
participants and new participants took part in a follow up study (Study 2). In a correlational
analysis, a significant positive relationship was revealed regarding friendship maintenance,
friendship qualities, and contact (r=.342, p<.001; r=.371, p<.001) in Study 1. A significant
negative relationship was found between face-to-face college contact and the Positivity subscale
of the Friendship Maintenance Scale (r=-.530, p=.009) in Study 2. Future research should assess
other factors, besides contact, that may add to the dissolution of high school best friendships
upon entering college.
Friendship Maintenance
The world can be a very exciting and at the same time a very terrifying place for a young
child. While growing up, a child needs someone who is there to be his/her guiding force. This
guide or link to the outside world teaches and leads the child in the direction to make certain
decisions about his/her life. It is most commonly thought that adults serve as this link for
children in the sense that they “promote the child’s adjustment” and “preserve society” (Youniss,
1980). In other words, adults are able to encourage the child to explore the outside world and yet
they are also able to protect the child from certain ideas and views that the world may hold that
the child is not ready for or able to understand. While adults have a distinct purpose in the lives
of children, is it possible that relationships with peers play a much larger role than
conventionally thought? The theories of Harry Stack Sullivan and Jean Piaget propose a different
understanding of the child’s link to the outside world.
Both Sullivan and Piaget understand the child as being an interpersonal human being
rather than being individualistic or self-contained. It is not only adults who teach children about
life, but it is more importantly other peers who teach children about life. Together, Sullivan and
Piaget “propose that peer relations are a major and positive force in development” (Youniss,
1980). Through peer interaction children learn to become interpersonally sensitive, learn how to
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handle intimacy, and learn ways to achieve mutual understanding. These are aspects that adults
can not fully teach children. They may be able to tell them about experiences that they have had
as a child and/or adolescent, but they are not able to relate in the same way as two children who
are the same age and who are experiencing the same trials and hardships. Also, peers are not able
to protect other peers from the outside world as well as adults can. This means that the child is
also exposed to more than he/she would be without other peers in his/her life. The two
individuals experience these life events together. The adult may still be in the child’s life, but
he/she can not relate to the child like another person who is experiencing the same challenges.
According to the presented perspective, the impacts of peer relationships are also “the key to
interpersonal adjustment not just in childhood but throughout later life” (Youniss, 1980).
In some situations, parents are not aware of how their child is treated when they are not
with their child or when their child is at school. Children have a way of being able to make
everything seem like it is okay even if it is not. According to Judith Harris, her parents had no
idea that she did not have many friends at school when her family moved from Arizona to a
Northeastern suburb. She was never a girl who liked to wear frilly dresses and talk about girl
things. She had trouble making friends because all of the girls at her new school were “snooty”.
During this time of her life, she says that she mostly kept to herself and read a lot of books. Four
years later her family moved back to Arizona and she felt accepted by her peers. Because she
spent so much time reading back in her old town, she actually fit in with kids who were smart
and they all thought that she was smart. Harris believes that a child’s personality is predisposed
at birth. The environment in which a child is put can change and mold this personality. This
environment is not, according to Harris (1998), the environment that parents create for their
children in the boundaries of their home, but rather the outside environment that children share
with their peers.
What kind of impact does this idea have on friendship? This idea raises friendship to a
much higher level than the more conventional idea of adults having the most impact on children.
Friendship is not only seen as an intimate and trusting relationship with someone. It is now
viewed as a relationship that has a major influence on the personal and social development of a
person. Also, friendships are now regarded as a part of a person’s life that can mold their
personality. Without friends, one would never be directly exposed to the many key aspects of
growing up in a normal and healthy manner. Children and adolescents may be told about and/or
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learn social experiences from observing adults, but they will never truly understand these
processes without going through them directly.
Most children and adolescents have someone that they consider to be their best friend or
a close friend. These are most likely the friends who have the most impact upon this individual’s
link to the outside world. This does not have to be one person throughout the child’s life.
Sullivan would argue that it is good for a child to have someone that they would consider a
“chum”. This is a friend whom the child is closest with throughout their preadolescent, and
perhaps, adolescent years. Because of the presence of this peer, the child has an easier time
during adolescence (which can be a difficult time for many young people) (Youniss, 1980).
Much research has been done on the friendships of children and adolescence (Bukowski, Hoza,
& Boivin, 1994, Hartup, 1996, Hodges, Boivin, Vitaro, & Bukowski, 1999, Bukowski, Hoza, &
Boivin, 1993), but if a close friend is so important, then why aren’t more people concerned with
the transition of adolescents’ best friendships from high school to college?
The following two excerpts were taken from an article called, “Narratives of Self in
Adolescence”. They show what it feels like to go away to college and how hard it is to keep
contact with the friends that the adolescent once knew and interacted with everyday.
Natasha: “People are always changing… With one of my friends, we try to hold onto
each other even when we are different and that just makes it harder to relate and
be together… I guess because we are not the same people that we used to be, and
we keep trying to pretend… and so, we hide things from each other. We just want
to act like we’re ten years old and just the best of friends.”
Joe: “We’re all so busy it’s hard to find time to talk or e-mail, and since we don’t
go home that often, we really don’t see each other that much… Sometimes
I think about what kind of friend I am that I’m not putting enough effort
into keeping in touch, but I think we all understand it’s hard… We’ve been
friends for years so it’ll work out somehow.” (Azmitia, Ittel, &
Radmacher, 2005)
When reading these passages, many college students can relate to Natasha and Joe. These two
examples show how upsetting it can be to lose the friends who were closest to a person during
childhood or young adolescence. The ties that Natasha and Joe once had to the outside world are
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changing now that they are in college. Does this have to happen? Does a person’s best friend
have to change when leaving and moving to a new place?
Paul and Brier (2001) assessed “friendsickness” in first year college students.
Friendsickness is defined as “preoccupation with and concern for the loss of or change in
precollege friendships” (Paul & Brier, 2001). The researchers feel that friendsickness adds to the
maladjustment of college students. Their research found that friendsickness tended to increase as
precollege concerns increased; also friendsickness increased when one had more precollege
friends in their college social network. Paul and Brier concluded that the relationships that were
formed as a child will never be the same again once the friends leave for college. For a period of
time the two individuals want to maintain the friendship and work hard at doing so. Some of
these friendships do last, but in reality most of them do not. The friendships that do last may
become lessened from best friendships to close friend. In the present study, the researcher tried
to find the relationship between friendship maintenance, friendship qualities, and the amount of
contact the two friends have while living in new environments. All of these factors add to a
friendship that may either succeed or fail depending on the effort each of the friends are willing
to put into the friendship.
In a study done by Rose (1984), patterns of friendship termination were evaluated using
one hundred fifty-five undergraduates from a Midwestern university. One of the patterns of
termination was identified as physical separation. Here, Rose argues that these students had a
hard time keeping contact with their friends from home because of being separated. Many of the
students did not have their friends’ new addresses and did not have the means to visit them on a
daily basis. Also, there were friendships where one friend went to college and the other stayed in
high school. One of the 19 year old males gave the following description:
When I was at college in town and he was a senior in high school, a separation came up.
We did not have a fight or a quarrel, but he leaned away from me so he could involve
himself with his senior buddies. It is very understandable that this was his last year and
he should make the most of it, but it was wrong for him just to drop me (Rose, 1984).
According to Rose, physical separation, whether you live in different places or even if you live in
the same town and go to different schools, is a key factor in the termination of friendships.
Technology is changing communication and the amount of interaction between people. In
2005, Business Week Online published statistics about cell phone usage. The highest rates were
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among individuals who were 18-34 years of age. Forty-three percent of this age group uses
instant messaging provided by their cell phones, in comparison to 32% of 35-44 year olds. In a
poll taken in July of 2005, 37.3% of 1,000 13-18 year olds send and receive text messages. The
Washington Post stated that land lines are becoming obsolete on many college campuses and
across the country. This means that cell phones are becoming the preferred method of
telecommunication. What implications does this have for friendship? It is now much easier for
two individuals to get in touch with each other. A person no longer has to be near a “land line” to
make a call. People can virtually make calls from any venue they wish. There have been a
number of studies that focused on the increasing use of cell phones and “socially interactive
technologies” for adolescents (Campbell, 2006; Bryant, Sander-Jackson, & Smallwood, 2006;
Kamibeppu & Sugiura, 2005). All of these studies demonstrate that the use of technology as
communication is becoming a part of life. By looking at the recent statistics, one can infer that
proximity may no longer be a key factor in friendship termination because it is much easier for
people who are at a distance from each other to communicate than it was twenty years ago.
Debra Oswald has done many studies on friendship maintenance assessing how it applies
to college freshmen and why it is so important in the lives of new college students (Oswald &
Clark, 2003, Oswald & Clark, 2006, Oswald, Clark, & Kelly, 2004). In one of these studies,
Oswald and Clark (2003) look at relationship investment, friendship maintenance, and social
loneliness. The researchers of this study evaluated college freshmen during their first semester at
college and during their second semester at college. Nearly half of high school best friendships
become close or casual friendships by the end of the first year of college. Why is this? The
researchers believed that it is not due to proximity because if the two people communicate
frequently the friendship should stay the same. The results of this study are different from those
found in the Rose study. This may be due to the fact that the Internet did not exist and cellular
phones were not widely used in the 1980s when the Rose study was conducted. Because of this,
the researcher of the present study agrees with the Oswald and Clark study regarding the fact that
proximity alone does not lead to friendship termination.
Oswald and Clark found that it is important to understand the influence that friendship
maintenance behaviors play in a relationship and in the lives of students who are separated from
their high school best friends. It did not matter in Oswald and Clark’s study how many friends
these students had, but it did matter if the relationship was with someone the participant
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considered an acquaintance or with someone who the participant considered a best friend. If the
student maintains his/her best friendship from high school throughout the course of his/her first
year of college he/she is less likely to experience social loneliness and more likely to adjust
better to life in a new environment. The current researcher is also interested in finding if there
will be any change between the current study’s results and the results from the Clark and Oswald
study. Due to technological advances, the researcher feels that the current study may yield results
different from those of the Clark and Oswald study.
One limitation to the Oswald study was that the students were assessed for the first time
during their first semester at college. Oswald and Clark would have rather assessed the students
for the first time even before they arrived for their first semester. Because they were not able to
start the experiment until the fall semester, the students already had some time to adjust to their
surroundings and their high school best friendships may have changed as a result of this. The
present study is taking a different approach. While researching this topic, a study was found on
“precollege concerns about losing and making friends in college” (Paul & Kelleher, 1995) The
variables assessed in this study are not the same as in the present study, but the researcher felt as
if the method of the study was more reliable and valid than the method of the Oswald study. In
the study, Paul and Kelleher (1995) evaluated precollege relational concerns, precollege and new
college friendship satisfaction, and the participant’s self-perception. The study began at college
orientation and the second part of the study took place ten to eleven weeks into the first semester.
The structure of Paul and Kelleher’s study has an advantage over the Oswald study because it
started before the students had a chance to make new friends at college and get acclimated to
their new surroundings.
Oswald and Clark (2006) further assess friendship maintenance factors and their relation
to problem-solving styles of college students. Best friends tend to engage in maintenance
behaviors more often than close or casual friends (Oswald & Clark, 2006). It was found that
maintenance behaviors positively correlated with problem-solving styles of voice and loyalty and
were negatively correlated with styles of neglect and exit. From these results, it is understood
that communication is a large part of friendship maintenance and that styles of avoidance do not
sustain a strong relationship. “It takes two people, working together, to maintain a friendship”
(Oswald & Clark, 2006). Maintenance behaviors require some dependency from each member of
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the friendship. They have to work together to continue the relationship, whether it is healthy or
not.
It is known that friendship maintenance behaviors are important, but do certain friendship
qualities also play a role in a long lasting high school best friendship? Friendship qualities play a
fundamental role in the strength of a friendship. Factors such as closeness, lack of conflict, and
companionship all add to a strong and well-rounded friendship. Just because an individual
considers someone to be his or her best friend, does not mean that they have a very strong
relationship. The strength of the relationship may also add to the failure of high school best
friendships. According to the Oswald study, having a “quality” friendship makes the transition
from high school to college easier. Bukowski, Hoza, and Boivin (1994) created the Friendship
Qualities Scale to explain dimensions of a quality friendship. A quality friendship can be defined
by five different aspects of friendship. These include companionship, conflict, help, security, and
closeness. Saferstein, Neimeyer, & Hagans (2005) used the Friendship Qualities Scale to
compare friendship quality to attachment styles of college students. It was found that
transcending problems correlated with secure attachment and higher levels of conflict were
correlated with avoidance. A shortened form of the Friendship Qualities Scale (as used in a study
by Saferstein, Neimeyer, & Hagans (2005)) is being used in the present study. By using this
measurement, the researcher was able to get a clearer understanding of the strength of the
friendship and what qualities structure a friendship that can last when the two individuals are
separated during their first year of college.
In the present study, the qualities that are encompassed in a friendship are evaluated.
Also, friendship maintenance is evaluated as in the Oswald studies. A social network grid is used
for this study so that the researcher can narrow down the participant’s social network to people
with whom they were close during their high school years. The hypotheses follow. Hypothesis 1:
More friendship maintenance behaviors and higher scores on the subtests of the friendship
qualities scale (except for conflict) will result from those who have more contact (face-to-face
and/or by telephone or computer) with their best friends from high school. Hypothesis 2: If the
two friends have a lot of contact with each other the proximity between them should not make a
difference in the findings. In other words, it should not matter if the two friends live five miles or
three-hundred miles from each other.
Method
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Participants
The participants in the present study were Marywood University undergraduate students.
They were all first year freshmen and participated on a voluntary basis. The study was open to
both males and females. Study 1 contained approximately 201 participants most of whom were
female (N=153) and eighteen years of age (N=160). Study 2 contained approximately 23
participants most of whom were again female (N=21) and were between eighteen and nineteen
years.
Materials
Four questionnaires will be used in this study:
Social Network Grid: The first questionnaire seeks to establish the participant’s social
network. On the questionnaire, the participant is asked whom she/he would consider his or
herself to be close with when he/she was in high school. They were allowed to write down best
friends, close friends, teachers and/or family members. They were also asked about people who
they would consider to be their best friends/close friends now that they are in college. For Study
2, a question asking about the participant’s social network during college, on the Social Network
Grid, was also used.
Propinquity: The next questionnaire has a series of questions about propinquity (Benner,
2004). Some examples include yes or no questions such as, “Did your high school best friend
move away from home, including living on campus, to attend college?” Other examples include
questions that are close-ended about how often the participant has contact with his/her best
friends (“How often do you have face-to-face contact with your best friend?”). It was decided to
make these questions close ended because the researcher did not want individuals answering the
questions with outrageous answers (such as, 450 times a month, etc…) Also, having the
questions close-ended made it easier for the participant to answer and for the researcher to
analyze. This is used so that the researcher can get a sense of how close the participant was with
their best friend before they started college and once they had entered college.
Friendship Maintenance Scale: This scale has been shown to be both valid and reliable
in the other studies in which it was used (Oswald & Clark, 2003). It assesses four different
aspects of friendship maintenance. These include positivity, supportiveness, openness, and
interaction. Positivity “includes behaviors that make the friendship positive and enjoyable”.
Supportiveness includes “behaviors that support the friend and the friendship, such as providing
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one another with emotional support”. Openness refers to “meaningful communication, such as
sharing private thoughts”. Lastly, interaction “refers to activities that friends do together, such as
going to social gatherings” (Oswald & Clark, 2003). The questions are written with an 11-point
Likert Scale (“1” being “never” and “11” being “frequently”). An example of a question from the
questionnaire is, “How often do you and your friend… Threaten to end the friendship because of
something that happened?”
When this scale was designed, bivariate correlations between the four maintenance
subscales, satisfaction, commitment, rewards, costs, alternatives and investments were computed
to test for validity. The maintenance behaviors positively correlated with satisfaction,
commitment, rewards, and investments. They negatively correlated with relationship costs and
alternatives. According to Oswald and Clark, the relationships supported what was hypothesized
leading to support for the validity of the scale (Oswald & Clark, 2003). The coefficient alphas for
positivity, supportiveness, openness, and interaction were .73, .90, .81, and .88, respectively.
Friendship Qualities Scale: This scale has been shown to be both reliable and valid in
other studies (Saferstein, Neimeyer, & Hagans, 2005, Bukowski, Hoza, & Boivin, 1994). It
assesses five different friendship qualities: companionship (amount of voluntary time spent
together), conflict (getting into fights or annoying each other), help (friend’s willingness to come
to other friend’s aid), security (belief that your friend can be relied upon and trusted), and
closeness (strength of attachment or bond that the friends have). Each question is answered using
a 5-point Likert Scale (“1” being “not true” and “5” being “really true”). An example of a
question taken from the scale is, “My friend and I spend all our free time together.”
Validity of this scale was assessed after the scale was designed. To find if the scale was
valid Bukowski et. al. compared ratings of reciprocated relations with ratings of nonreciprocated
relations using the Friendship Qualities Scale. They found that the ratings of the reciprocated
relations had higher levels of friendship quality. Next, they compared friendships that were
stable over a six month period to those that were not stable. When doing this they found that the
stable friendships all had higher scores than the non-stable friendships on all of the scales besides
the conflict scale (Bukowski, Hoza, & Boivin, 1994). The coefficient alphas for companionship,
conflict, help, security, and closeness were .76, .88, .89, .73, and .84, respectively
The last questionnaire asked for the participant’s demographics, including the
participant’s age, sex, ethnic background, and year of high school graduation. Asking about sex
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and ethnic background are important because qualities and maintenance of friendships may be
different depending on if the participant is a woman or man or depending on what kind of ethnic
background the participant is from.
Procedure
Study 1: Study 1 was completed during freshman orientation over the summer, before the
fall semester began. The students completed the survey packet in small group settings. Each
packet contained a consent form, three surveys, and a demographics form. The participants were
asked if they would be willing to partake in a follow up study done during the fall semester.
Study 2: Those participants who answered yes to taking part in a follow up study were emailed twelve weeks into the fall semester. The e-mail contained the consent form for the
experiment. They were asked to again complete the same surveys and the demographics form
that they completed over the summer. This time, the surveys were completed using a website.
Due to lack of participant interest, the experimenter sent a reminder e-mail to the people who
said they were interested in the follow up study realizing that many of them may have been busy
since it was close to the end of the semester. The experimenter then compiled the data from the
completed online surveys.
Results
In Study 1, twenty-one participants were planning to live at home and one-hundred eighty
of the participants were planning to live on campus during their freshmen year of college. Also
in Study 1, seventy-one of the participants said that their high school best friend would not be
living at home this current school year to attend college. Sixty-four dyads consisted of one friend
who is living at home this school year and one friend who is living at college, fourteen dyads
consisted of both friends living at home for this school year, and one-hundred twenty dyads
consisted of both friends living away from home during this school year. Thirty participants
responded that their high school best friend would not be attending college in this current school
year. Ten participants reported that they were no longer best friends with the person who was
their high school best friend at the time of the first study.
In Study 2, two participants reported that they would be living at home for this school
year to attend college. Also, eight participants reported that their high school best friend would
not be moving away from home this year to attend college. Eight dyads consisted of one friend
living at home and one friend living at college for this school year, one dyad consisted of both
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high school best friends living at home this school year, and fourteen dyads consisted of both
friends living away from home this year. Six participants said that their high school best friend
would not be attending college this school year. Lastly, only one participant reported that she
was no longer best friends with her high school best friend.
The Friendship Maintenance Scale is scored on four different subscales. These subscales
include positivity, supportiveness, openness, and interaction. Seven items were reverse scored.
All of the questions on each subscale were added together to give four separate subscale scores.
Lastly, all four of these scores were added together to give a global friendship maintenance
score. The score was higher if the friendship maintenance skills were greater. On the global scale
the scores ranged from 97 to 407 for Study 1. The scores ranged from 188 to 387 for Study 2.
The Friendship Qualities Scale is scored on five different subscales. These subscales
include companionship, conflict, help, security, and closeness. One item was reverse scored. All
of the questions from each subscale were added together to give five separate subscale scores.
Next, all of the subscale scores were added together to give an overall Friendship Qualities Scale
score. The higher scores meant that the Friendship Qualities were greater. The overall scores
from the Friendship Qualities Scales ranged from 58 to 115 for Study 1. The scores ranged from
74 to 99 for Study 2.
During Study 1, there were two questions about contact. One was regarding face-to-face
contact while in high school and the other was about non-face-to-face contact while in high
school. Both of these questions wanted to know about contact with the person’s high school best
friend. The answer choices were rated on a scale of 1 (less than 10 times a month) to 4
(everyday). Then these two questions were added to form a global contact score. This score takes
into account both face-to-face and non-face-to-face contact between the friends. The scores
ranged from 2 to 8 (2 being the least amount of contact and 8 being the highest amount of
contact).
Table 1.1 shows all of the variables correlated in Study 1. Hypothesis 1 was confirmed
for Study 1. It was revealed that the contact global score correlated positively with the Friendship
Maintenance Scale global score (r=.342, p=.001). The Friendship Qualities Scale overall score
also correlated positively with the global contact question (r=.371, p=.001).
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Table 1.1 Correlations for the FMS and FQS with Global Contact (Study 1)
Friendship Maintenance
Friendship Qualities
Pearson Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed)
N
Pearson Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed)
N
Contact Global
.342(**)
.000
187
.371(**)
.000
187
During Study 2, the participants were asked the same two questions about contact with
their best friend while they were in high school. They were also asked the same two questions
but this time they were asked the questions about their relationship with their high school best
friend now that they are in college. The global score for contact while still in high school ranged
from 4 to 8. The global score for contact while in college ranged from 2 to 7. It can be noted
from the findings that contact between the two friends seemed to decrease from high school to
college.
Table 1.2 shows the Friendship Maintenance Scale and the Friendship Qualities Scale
Global Scores correlated with the college, high school, and global contact scores in Study 2.
There were no significant relationships found between high school contact and the Friendship
Maintenance Scale or the Friendship Qualities Scale. However, there was a trend that did not
reach statistical significance (p<.07) between degree of contact in high school and scores on the
Friendship Maintenance Scale. Also, there were no significant relationships found between
college contact and the Friendship Maintenance Scale and the Friendship Qualities Scale Global
Scores. It should be noted that while there was not significance on either a .05 or a .01 level
according to the Pearson Correlation there was still a positive trend between contact and the two
scales. This means that while it was not statistically significant, the scores on the scales did seem
to increase as contact increased. Because of these findings, hypothesis 2 cannot be confirmed.
Proximity may play a role in the results of the present study (12 participants reported living at
least 100+ miles from their friend).
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Table 1.2 Correlations for FMS and FQS Global Scores with College, HS, and
Global Contact (Study 2)
Friendship Maintenance
Friendship Qualities
Pearson Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed)
N
Pearson Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed)
N
College Contact
.142
.517
23
.289
.181
23
HS Contact
.384
.070
23
.263
.225
23
Contact Global
.295
.171
23
.337
.116
23
In Study 2, the face-to-face college contact question (“On average, how many times a
month would you say you have face-to-face contact with your high school best friend now that
you are in college?”) did have a significant negative relationship with the Friendship
Maintenance Scale Positivity score (r=-.530, p=.001). The correlations can be seen in Table 1.3.
The Positivity subscale measures behaviors that make the friendship more enjoyable. This means
that as one score increased the other score decreased. This was not what the researcher expected
to find. Further reasons for this occurrence should be studied in depth.
Table 1.3 Correlations for FMS Subscales with Face-to-Face, Non Face-to-Face, and
Global College Contact
Positivity
Pearson Correlation
Face-to-Face
Contact
-.530(**)
Non Face-to-Face
Contact
-.062
College
Contact
-.228
.009
.780
.295
23
23
23
-.147
.289
.208
.504
.182
.342
Sig. (2-tailed)
N
Supportiveness
Pearson Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed)
N
Openness
23
23
23
-.139
.241
.168
.528
.269
.444
23
23
23
Pearson Correlation
.045
.136
.135
Sig. (2-tailed)
.839
.536
.538
23
23
23
Pearson Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed)
N
Interaction
N
Discussion
The findings in this study can only be generalized to female friendships. Study 1
supported the hypothesis that the more contact between the two best friends the higher the scores
on the Friendship Maintenance Scale and the Friendship Qualities Scale. It is not clear which
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factor causes this relationship to occur. In other words, the researcher is not saying that higher
contact causes higher scores or that a higher score on the scales cause higher contact. The
researcher is stating that there seems to be a positive relationship between the three factors (that
is, as one increases, the others also increase).
Study 2 yielded different results than what the experimenter was expecting. Because of
this, hypothesis 2 could not be confirmed. Proximity may play a role in termination of high
school best friendships. There was no significance found between the four contact questions, the
two contact (high school and college) global questions, and the Friendship Maintenance Scale’s
global score. There was also no significance found between the four contact questions, the two
contact (high school and college) global questions, and the Friendship Qualities Scale’s global
score. Although the direction among the variables was what the experimenter thought it would
be, nothing was found to be statistically significant. This was probably due to the small size of
the sample in Study 2. It was also of interest to the researcher that the face-to-face college
contact question and the Friendship Maintenance Scale Positivity score had a statistically
significant negative relationship. This means that as the Positivity score increased the contact
score for this one question would tend to decrease. It is hard to say why this was found. The
experimenter expected that as one would increase the other would also increase.
Is it possible that an increase in the score on the Positivity subscale of the Friendship
Maintenance Scale is related to a lesser amount of face-to-face contact? The friends may feel as
if face-to-face contact is no longer the same as it used to be when they were in high school and it
may not be viewed as being as enjoyable as it once was; this may be due to changes in
personality, interests, or values. This is starting to show that the friendship is changing and
distress may be forming within the structure of the relationship. Also, it is possible that the two
friends may feel that they do not need to have as much contact if their friendship is being
maintained in other ways. It is important to recognize that although contact is a maintaining
factor in friendships, it is not the only maintaining factor. Conflict may also be more salient in
relationships where there is more face-to-face contact. When people see each other more often
there is more possibility that there will be conflict. This means that enjoyable behaviors in the
friendship may rise with less face-to-face contact because there is less of a chance that there is
conflict between the two friends. It should be noted that these questions were asked about high
school best friends. Most individuals recorded that they are still best friends with this same
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person and have been best friends with this person for a substantial amount of time (the average
length in friendship for Study 2 was seven years). It may be possible that the friends are no
longer concerned with having frequent contact because they have developed a sense of trust in
the relationship and do not feel as if they have to have frequent contact in order to have a
successful and meaningful relationship.
There were some limitations to the current study. The researcher feels that there were not
enough male participants to generalize any findings in this study to male friendships. Also, the
researcher had a difficult time finding participants for Study 2. Because of this, the original
method of the study was changed to find more participants. In the first design of the study, the
participants for Study 2 were only supposed to come from those who were involved in Study 1.
When this was done, there was not enough interest from those who had taken part in Study 1.
Because of this, the researcher relied on other individuals to find participants for the study. Even
though this was done, the confidentiality of the participants was not given away.
The time length of the study was also changed. Study 2 was supposed to take place only
during the twelfth week of the fall semester. Due to lack of participation, the researcher decided
to extend the length of the study into the spring semester to try to get a larger sample of the
freshman class. Because of the timing differences, the results may have differed from what they
would have been if everyone was assessed during the twelfth week of classes. Also, some of the
participants went home for winter break between the time they were assessed for Study 1 and
Study 2. This means that they may have had contact with their high school best friend. Because
of this, they may have answered differently on the surveys than they would have if they had not
seen their friends.
Lastly, the researcher believes that there was not enough variance in the questions
regarding contact. The scale for the contact questions was only 1-4. This means that each
participant only had four answer choices for each contact question. The answers given by the
participants were not varied and the scale did not allow for the answers to be varied. If this study
were replicated, the researcher might want to make the contact questions have a Likert scale of
seven or eleven for more variance in responses. The researcher might also want to have a
questionnaire about all different forms of contact and more specific forms of contact that could
be shared between the high school best friends. This may include separate questions about non
face-to-face contact (phone, e-mail, Instant Messenger, letters) and face-to-face contact
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(spending time together alone or with others, activities the two are doing while spending time
together).
Future research may want to take into account single sex friendships and friendships of
both sexes. Also, further research may want to study female single sex friendships in comparison
to male single sex friendships. It was mentioned before that other factors, besides contact, affect
friendship maintenance. High school best friendships may change while a person is in college
and contact may not be the only reason why. In the future, researchers may want to study how
changes in values among the two friends, changes in interests, maturity, and identity all play into
the process of the changing friendship. As discussed earlier, just because the two friends do not
have as much contact as they once might have, does not mean that their friendship is going to
end. These other factors might or might not play a more influential role in why exactly people
end their friendships with their high school best friends after being friends for many years. Also,
future studies should take into account that just because the two individuals may not be best
friends any longer, it does not mean that they are no longer friends at all.
Also, more information may be found about the friendships if the time period between
the two experiments was lengthened. The researchers may want to do a study with sophomores
instead of freshmen. This may be better because, besides friendship changes, freshmen are
dealing with many changes in their lives during their first year at college. By doing the study
with sophomores the researcher feels that she could bypass the other unsettled emotions
freshmen may be feeling, allowing the participant to better answer questions about their high
school best friendships. Also, freshmen are often bogged down with many surveys. Because of
this, the participants may not be giving their best responses because they are tired of the many
surveys they are asked to complete. By using sophomores, the researcher would not encounter
this obstacle.
Further researchers may want to assess the high school best friendship, in a longitudinal
study, every year that the person is in college as opposed to only during their freshman year. This
may show different patterns of friendship that have not yet been studied in college students. In
this type of study, the researchers could also have a smaller sample of participants. From this,
they would really be able to get an in depth and clear understanding of the friendship. If they had
a larger sample, they would be able to start noticing trends among the friendships (e.g., if contact
between the friends seems to decrease at a particular time during college or if friendship
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maintenance behaviors differed at any times during college). Also a qualitative study may be
helpful to assess in-depth responses to the dynamics of friendship during college years. This
would allow for the researcher to contrast and compare the friendships based on age in a shorter
amount of time than in a longitudinal study.
Of course contact is not the only factor that should be studied when understanding why
friendships change from high school to college. This is only a sample of the many aspects of
friendship that can account for this change. Study 1 yielded results as the experimenter predicted
(as contact increased, so did friendship maintenance and friendship qualities). Study 2 (now
including contact since the two friends have been at college) did not yield the results that the
experimenter expected to see. There are many factors that may have led to this finding.
Friendships change at many different points in the lives of individuals. We can only do our best
to understand why and how this occurs.
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Author Notes
This study was done to complete the requirements to obtain an honors degree from Marywood
University. Portions of this study will be presented at Marywood University’s Undergraduate
Research Forum.
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