RESEARCH ARTICLE


A Measure for the Study of Friendship and Romantic Relationship Quality from Adolescence to Early-Adulthood



Lucia Ponti, Silvia Guarnieri, Andrea Smorti, Franca Tani*
Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Via San Salvi, 12, Pad. 26 - 50135, Florence, Italy.


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Creative Commons License
© 2009 Ponti et al .

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Via San Salvi, 12, Pad. 26 - 50135, Florence, Italy; Tel: 0039-055-6237812; Fax: 0039-055-6236047; E-mail: franca.tani@psico.unifi.it


Abstract

Friendship and romantic relationships are central to individual social life. These close relationships become increasingly significant during adolescence and early adulthood, promoting human development and well-being [1]. Despite their importance, there are no equivalent measures for the study of the quality of these different types of close relationships. The main aim of the present study was to develop an equivalent self-report measure to assess the quality of friendships and romantic relationships from adolescence to early adulthood. In Study 1 we took the Friendship Qualities Scale (FQS) developed by Bukowski, Hoza and Boivin [2] and adapted it for Italian adolescents and early-adults. The FQS reveals, via confirmatory factor analysis, five main qualitative dimensions: Conflict, Companionship, Help, Security and Closeness. In Study 2 we developed an equivalent version of the FQS, the Romance Qualities Scale (RQS) in order to measure the same five dimensions for romantic relationships. Data analyses verified the multidimensional factorial structure, the factorial invariance, and the reliability of both scales. Our studies therefore verify that the FQS and RQS are reliable measures to assess friendship and romantic relationship quality from adolescence to early adulthood.

Keywords: Friendship, romantic relationship, equivalent measure, adolescence, early-adulthood.