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Friendships and Social Networks in Childhood and Adolescence: Fluidity, Reliability, and Interrelations
Abstract
Social networks and friendships were tracked over a 3-week period for 132 students enrolled in fourth- and seventh-grade classrooms. Individual interviews were employed to collect data on friendships. Social group membership was determined by the composite social-cognitive map (SCM) procedure and by self-reports. Considerable overlap was found among the methods for establishing relational patterns (i.e., friendships, self-reported groups, composite social-cognitive maps). When loose criteria for stability were employed, high stability was found in friendships (p = .56-.75) and social group membership (p = .90) over a 3-week period. But when stringent criteria were employed, only modest social relationship stability was observed in both methods, suggesting that there is much greater fluidity in peer bonds than has been generally recognized. The relationship between friendship and social network measures, the distinctive information yielded by social networks, and gender and age differences in group structure, fluidity, and friendships are discussed.
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Citations
Cited by
Steinberg, L., & Morris, A. S. (2001) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.83 · Cited by 2,517
Peer Relationships in Adolescence
Brown, B. B., & Larson, J. (2009) · Handbook of Adolescent Psychology · doi:10.1002/9780470479193.adlpsy002004 · Cited by 1,208
The Teenage Brain: Sensitivity to Social Evaluation
Somerville, L. H. (2013) · Current Directions in Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0963721413476512 · Cited by 1,011
Friendships and adaptation in the life course.
Hartup, W. W., & Stevens, N. (1997) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.121.3.355 · Cited by 976
Childhood peer relationships: social acceptance, friendships, and peer networks
Gifford-Smith, M. E., & Brownell, C. A. (2003) · Journal of School Psychology · doi:10.1016/s0022-4405(03)00048-7 · Cited by 961
Metadata
- Authors
- Cairns, R. B., Leung, M., Buchanan, L., & Cairns, B. D.
- Venue
- Child Development
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1995-10
- Volume
- 66
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1330
- ISSN
- 0009-3920 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1985521685
- Cited by
- 385
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 10.42
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Friendships and Social Networks in Childhood and Adolescence: Fluidity, Reliability, and Interrelations. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1995.tb00938.x
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- Cairns, R. B., Leung, M., Buchanan, L., & Cairns, B. D. (1995). Friendships and Social Networks in Childhood and Adolescence: Fluidity, Reliability, and Interrelations. Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1995.tb00938.x
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
