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The goal of making friends for youth with disabilities: creating a goal menu
Author(s) -
Gerhardt S.,
McCallum A.,
McDougall C.,
Keenan S.,
Rigby P.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
child: care, health and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.832
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1365-2214
pISSN - 0305-1862
DOI - 10.1111/cch.12251
Subject(s) - friendship , psychology , set (abstract data type) , thematic analysis , process (computing) , qualitative research , making of , focus group , theme (computing) , goal setting , variety (cybernetics) , applied psychology , social psychology , computer science , sociology , world wide web , social science , artificial intelligence , anthropology , programming language , operating system , advertising , business
Background Clinicians working with youth with disabilities have acknowledged making friends as a commonly identified client goal. Clinicians find this goal difficult to address, as there are no measures that provide a breakdown of making friends into functional steps. In addition, research on friendship has traditionally focused on characteristics and quality of friendships rather than the friend‐making process as a whole. A goal menu, comprised of a variety of steps that address the goal of making friends, would provide guidance to clinicians challenged with this goal in practice. Purpose To develop an understanding of the friend‐making process as a first step towards the development of a goal menu for the goal of making friends. Methods A literature review, youth focus group and expert clinician semi‐structured interviews and consultation were used to generate a comprehensive data set. Established qualitative methods were used to sort and group the data into categories. A thematic analysis of the categories was performed. Results Analysis revealed four themes integral to the friend‐making process: person factors influencing friend‐making , making friend‐making a priority, opportunity for friend‐making and motivation to make friends . An additional theme identified as occasionally involved in the process was a little bit of luck in making friends . Conclusions The themes generated by this research indicate that actionable target areas exist for the somewhat abstract notion of friend‐making and the authors recommend that clinicians explore beyond person factors when addressing the goal of making friends. As a next step, the identified themes will provide the foundation for a goal menu, ultimately enabling clinicians to address the goal of making friends in a more efficient and effective manner.