Children's Friendship Expectations: A Cognitive-Developmental Study

The sequential-invariance hypothesis was tested for friendship-expectation (FE) development using 480 children aged 6-14 years, from primary 2-7 and secondary 1-2 forms of the Dundee, Scotland, school system. Statistical comparisons were made within and between this and an age-equivalent Anglo-Canadian sample. FE essays of subjects were content analyzed along 21 FE dimensions. 11 FE dimensions increasing significantly over age were individually compared between the 2 samples for developmental order of onset. The sequential-invariance hypothesis received statistical support, and cluster analysis on 9 FE dimensions in the developmental sequence suggested 3 FE stages: the situational, contractual, and internal-psychological, the contractual stage being the least reliable.