Open AccessRelationship Network Quality: Adolescent Adjustment and Perceptions of Relationships With Parents and Friends
Author(s) -
Laursen Brett,
Mooney Karen S.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
american journal of orthopsychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.959
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1939-0025
pISSN - 0002-9432
DOI - 10.1037/0002-9432.78.1.47
Subject(s) - psychology , perception , quality (philosophy) , developmental psychology , ethnically diverse , positive relationship , social psychology , clinical psychology , medicine , environmental health , population , philosophy , epistemology , neuroscience
Early, mid‐, and late adolescents ( N = 406) from an ethnically diverse community completed questionnaires describing positive and negative features of relationships with their mothers, fathers, and same‐sex best friends. School grades, self‐reported adjustment problems, and self‐worth differed as a function of both the number of relationships that adolescents described as high on positive features and the number of relationships that adolescents described as high on negative features. Adolescents with relationships that were uniformly good quality (i.e., high on positive features and low on negative features) were better adjusted than adolescents with relationships that were uniformly poor quality (i.e., low on positive features and high on negative features). The results failed to support the proposition that a single high quality relationship buffers against suboptimal levels of support in other relationships.