Resources for Friendship Intervention

Programs affecting friendship patterns can be implemented at the individual, dyadic, network, immediate environment, community, or societal level. Literature specifically focused on friendship intervention is scarce. The relevance of other resources for the design and assessment of friendship interventions at each of these levels is described. Practitioners who design social interaction interventions are prompted to familiarize themselves with the friendship literature and to apply the findings. Even if the goal is not to manipulate friendship patterns specifically, interventions should at least be designed not to undermine existing relationships

Aging well with friends and family.

Abstract: Aging encourages people to enhance their friend and family relationships. In general, the elderly tend to have more heterogeneity in relationships as they grow older. They depend on these relationships for instrumental, financial and emotional support. As a result, older adults who have many friends and have close ties with their families are more socially and psychologically well-adjusted than those who are alienated from their networks. Article: An assumption runs throughout the gerontological literature that having friends and active relationships with family members is better than not having them. Since the 1960s, when social gerontologists began debating the relative merits of the disengagement and activity theories, researchers have used the number of friends, the existence of active family relationships, and the amount of contact older adults have with these presumed intimates as indicators of aging well. Recently, however, researchers have recognized that not all personal relationships are good ones and not all social interactions affect older adults positively (e.g., The tendency of researchers to assume that all personal relationships are positive is not the only limitation characteristic of the investigations on this topic. In both the family and friendship literatures, samples are often less than adequate, either being representative of very specific subpopulations of older adults or not being representative of any population at all (i.e., snowball, volunteer, or other nonprobability samples). Personal relationship researchers tend to study single respondents rather than pairs of friends or family members. When they do investigate dyads, they often study them in isolation rather than considering them in the context of the family or friendship network. Both literatures are also primarily descriptive rather than theoretically motivated, and, consequently, what is known about relationships is little more than a list of findings of all studies. Each of these personal relationship literatures has additional limitations. For example, researchers have rarely studied friendships longitudinally, making it impossible to examine changes in friendship as people age and to separate out age, period, and cohort effects. Gerontological friendship researchers usually study single-race (almost always Caucasian) or single-sex (usually female) populations; when they do include more than one race or bot

Relations of meaning in life and sense of coherence to distress in cancer patients: a meta-analysis

OBJECTIVE: Cancer patients report high rates of distress. The related constructs of meaning in life (MiL) and sense of coherence (SOC) have long been recognized as important factors in the psychological adjustment to cancer; however, both constructs' associations with distress have not been quantitatively reviewed or compared in this population. Informed by Park's integrated meaning-making model and Antonovsky's salutogenic model, the goals of this meta-analysis were the following: (1) to compare the strength of MiL-distress and SOC-distress associations in cancer patients; and (2) to examine potential moderators of both associations (i.e., age, gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation, disease stage, and time since diagnosis). METHODS: A literature search was conducted using electronic databases. Overall, 62 records met inclusion criteria. The average MiL-distress and SOC-distress associations were quantified as Pearson's r correlation coefficients and compared using a one-way ANOVA. RESULTS: Both MiL and SOC demonstrated significant, negative associations with distress (r = -0.41, 95% CI: -0.47 to -0.35, k = 44; and r = -0.59, 95% CI: -0.67 to -0.51, k = 18, respectively). Moreover, the MiL-distress association was significantly smaller than the SOC-distress association (Qb  = 10.42, df = 1, p < 0.01). Neither association varied by the tested moderators. CONCLUSIONS: Findings provide support for the clinical relevance of MiL and SOC across demographic and medical subgroups of cancer patients. The strength of the SOC-distress association suggests that incorporating aspects of SOC (e.g., the perceived manageability of life circumstances) into meaning-centered interventions may improve their effectiveness for distressed cancer patients

A meta-analysis of the relationship between social constraints and distress in cancer patients

Social constraints on cancer-related disclosure have been associated with increased distress among cancer patients. The goals of this meta-analysis were: (1) to quantify the average strength of the relationships between social constraints and general and cancer-specific distress in cancer patients; and (2) to examine potential moderators of these relationships. A literature search was conducted using electronic databases, and 30 studies met inclusion criteria. Moderate, significant relationships were found between social constraints and both general distress (r = 0.37, 95 % CI 0.31-0.43) and cancer-specific distress (r = 0.37, 95 % CI 0.31-0.44). The relationship between social constraints and cancer-specific distress was stronger for studies of patients who, on average, had been diagnosed more recently. Relationships between social constraints and both general and cancer-specific distress did not vary by age or gender. Findings suggest that social constraints may be important to target in interventions to reduce distress in cancer patients, especially those who have been recently diagnosed

Factors Underlying the Structure of Older Adult Friendship Networks.

This paper examines the structure of older adult friendship networks and how the immediate social environment in which they are embedded shapes them. Data were a probability sample (N = 65) of the residents of Greensboro, North Carolina, aged 55 years or older, living in noninstitutional settings. Four of six bivariate hypotheses regarding the relationships between measures of homogeneity, internal hierarchy, and solidarity derived from the friendship literature were confirmed, but none of the 10 hypotheses based on findings from the organizational literature was. We used factor analyses to examine the dimensions underlying these network characteristics and cluster analysis to identify patterns of relationships among these dimensions. The three factors underlying networks structure—egalitarianism, sociability, and religiosity—shaped the friendships of the respondents and reflected the culture and social structure of the context in which this study took place. Although all elderly in this study were generally subject to the same cultural and social structural forces, slightly different components affected the outsiders, low status insiders, and high status insiders and thus they had different patterns of friendship networks factors

People Would Talk: Normative Barriers to Cross-sex Friendships for Elderly Women.

A normative explanation for elderly women's lack of male friends is developed by showing that cross-sex friendship is defined as romance, that there are norms inhibiting romance during old age, and that other norms encourage them to reject potential mates who can no longer meet traditional sex role demands. The data were derived from in-depth interviews and observations of 70 non-married, white, elderly women who lived in a middle-class Chicago suburb. It can be expected that future cohorts of elderly women who will have been exposed to models of non-romantic cross-sex friendships early in their lives will have more of these friendships during old age

Examining Romantic Relationships.

All of the articles included in this issue examine romantic relationships. Although it was not intended, these articles therefore comprise a de facto special issue on this topic. Let me be perfectly clear: I did not hold back related articles in order to publish them together. The articles that were ready to submit when this issue was due to the publisher just all happened to be on the topic of romantic partnerships. This is the second time during my term as Editor of Personal Relationships that this has happened; as Associate Editor Susan Boon noted (“Communicating Personal Relationships Research Findings,”Personal Relationships, Volume 15, Number 3, p. i), last year’s third issue was also totally devoted to articles on romantic relationships. Furthermore, the issue published in between these two included several articles focused on them as well

Emotional Closeness and Physical Distance Between Friends: Implications for Elderly Women Living in Age-Segregated and Age-Integrated Settings

The author discusses the need for a better theoretical understanding of friendship in order for its role in the lives of elderly people to be understood. The applicability to friendship of Simmel's approach to the study of social relationships is outlined. From this perspective, types of friendship are determined by the physical distance separating friends and the emotional closeness bringing them together. The data consist of seventy in-depth interviews of senior, unmarried women in a middle-class community bordering on Chicago. Qualitative data are reported to support quantitative analyses. There were positive relationships between emotional closeness and physical distance, duration and emotional closeness, and frequency of interaction and proximity. The author describes the implications for elderly women of the tendency for their close, old friends to be physically separated from them and their neighbors to be casual friends, but constant companions. The author discusses the effects of the age-density of residential context and life history on the types of friends the women had

Stepping in the Right Direction.

Collectively, the articles published in this issue remind us of the advantages of studying a variety of types of relationships in a variety of cultural contexts. Although in the editor's preface to the last issue of Personal Relationships (Volume 16, Number 1), I discussed the importance to the field of the in-depth literature focused on romantic relationships, ultimately the further development of a literature describing how the variation in the structures, processes, and consequences of romantic, marital, sibling, parent-child, friend, and other types of close relationships will be necessary to advance the field. Without the development of a robust comparative literature, it will, for example, remain unknown whether hierarchical relationships such as those between parents and children involve different processes and lead to different consequences than ones where equality is more likely such as friendship, whether legally recognized romantic relationships such as heterosexual marriages differ systematically from those that exist without legally-binding contracts such as co-habiting heterosexual or homosexual couples, and whether relationships determined by blood ties such as those between siblings differ in significant ways from those that are generally more voluntary such as friendships. Yes, this issue includes some studies of romantic partners and married couples, but it also includes studies of close relationship partners (including spouses, friends, and family members), parent-child relationships, and social networks and therefore represents “a step in the right direction.

Attitudes of Decision Makers Toward Adult Day Care.

There is a growing body of literature on adult day care, but there appear to be no studies of those who make decisions about older adults’participation. This article begins to fill this gap. The results suggest several directions for entrepreneurs and local planners. Adult day-care centers need to advertise extensively to children of older adults, their special friends, and older adults themselves. Large centers in central locations would probably not be as successful as small programs, perhaps in churches catering to a local homogeneous clientele. Centers arranged for the convenience of the decision makers, providing care during nonworking hours and transportation, would probably flourish. The data consist of 1985-1986 telephone interviews with 247 current and potential decision makers who lived in Greensboro, N.C