The Heterogeneity of Adolescent Factors: Investigating Individual, Interpersonal, and Contextual Factors

Abstract

Friendship is an essential relationship, and its importance is particularly pronounced in adolescence. While it is known to be an important peer relationship, it is both dynamic and complex, meaning there are many aspects of adolescent friendship that remain to be understood. With my dissertation, I explore the heterogeneity of adolescent friendships utilizing a combination of self- and peer-reported variables at the level of the individual, the interpersonal, and the contextual. In Study 1, I explored the relationship between individual differences and friendship change over time. Specifically, I considered the role of different HEXACO personality traits in relation to reciprocal friendship quantity, formation, maintenance, and dissolution over a one-year period. My findings suggest that while specific personality traits are not associated with friendship formation in my sample, some traits (e.g., Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience) are associated with friendship quantity and friendship maintenance. In Study 2, I investigated the potentially overlapping interpersonal contexts of friendship and aggression, comparing the concurrent outcomes of victimization and perpetration between friends to those found between non-friends. Results indicated that for both victimization and perpetration, the context of friendship alters the concurrent outcomes associated with aggression. In Study 3, I considered broad, contextual factors that may influence adolescent friendship. With a two-part study, I explored the role of a variety of social media platforms on in-person and online friendships. In the first part of the study, I employed social network analysis, with results suggesting that there is considerable, but not complete, overlap between adolescents’ in-person and online friendship networks. With the second part of Study 3, I found evidence for positive direct and indirect associations between use of specific social media platforms, the importance of technology for social connection, and levels of friendship closeness. Altogether, the three studies of my dissertation further our understandings of the heterogenous nature of adolescent friendships at different levels of analysis. These findings suggest that future research should be undertaken with this heterogeneity in mind, to help inform and promote healthy relationships in adolescence.