Relationship between Quality of Friendship and Coping with Stress in Children and Adolescents

The purpose of this research is to study the relationship between quality of friendship in five factors: reciprocity, proximity, self-disclosure, satisfaction, trust and coping with stress in children and adolescents. Subjects were 107 students (girls) from middle childhood, early adolescence, and late adolescence, who were randomly selected from Tehran schools. The quality of friendship was measured using a questionnaire (14 items) and sociometric data and coping with stress was measured using a structured interview (10 hypothetical situations). The results indicated that in middle childhood, there is significant relationship between the quality of friendship in two factors: proximity (positively), self-disclosure (negatively) and coping with stress in two levels: problem-focused, and emotion-focused. Also there is significant relationship between reciprocity with coping in early adolescence and between proximity and reciprocity (positively) and self-disclosure (negatively) with coping in late adolescence.