Ph.D. Thesis

The individual’s construction of friendship and its impact on the structure of social support networks: results of an interview study of older people in the city of Aachen.

Friendship is a relationship that is not institutionalized in the way marriages or parent-child-relationships are, although it can be understood as a ‘social institution’ or a ‘non-institutionalized institution.’ Therefore people have to define friendship on their own and negotiate with each dyadic partner what each friendship entails. The structural setting, the psychological disposition, and the individual’s life course experiences result in a subjective construction of the concept of friendship. Friends play an important role regarding social companionship and emotional support, but friendship dyads change over time. Transitions in adult life such as cohabitation, parenthood, divorce, or widowhood define structural settings that determine people’s ability and ways to engage in friendship. I hypothesize a relationship between the individual’s understanding of friendship on the one hand and the inclusion of friends in their social support network on the other.

I interviewed 52 adults aged 50 and older asking about their personal construction of friendship (e.g. definitions, relationship patterns, contact patterns), their psychological disposition towards friendships (e.g. companionability, extroversion) and important biographical transitions (education, romantic relationships, moves, working situation). After the interviews I presented 14 name generator items according to McCallister/Fisher (1978) and asked the respondents to name the three people that could give support within each specified situation.

My research questions are:

1. Which types of friendship exist in the sample?
2. Are underlying life course patterns identifiable?
3. Does a correlation between friendship type and social support network composition exist?