The developmental change of friendship in adolescence

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine friendship in adolescence and how it changed in each developmental stage. A questionnaire regarding friendship was created. Subjects were 579 students. They were junior high-school, high-school and university students. As the result of the factor analysis, the friendship was categorized by the two-dimensional space. One axis conserned the intimacy of their friendship ; and the other axis consisted on the number of their friends. Junior high school students tended to make many friends but their relationships were not so intimate. As they grew older, they tried to have more intimate friendships with just a few friends.