A Study Of The Relations Among Friendship, Peer Acceptance And Loneliness

More and more researches were focused on peer relations of childhood. Under such a background, the present study tried to examine the relationship of friendship, peer acceptance and loneliness during middle childhood.545 children in an elementary school from the third grade to the sixth grade, completed friend nomination, Friendship Quality Questionnaire, Children's Loneliness Scale and Peer Rating, Cross-section design and longitudinal design were employed in the present study.The findings indicated that:1. There are pairwise correlations among positive friendship quality, negative friendship quality, friendship quantity, peer acceptance and loneliness, except for the relationship of negative friendship quality and peer acceptance.2. There was significant gender and grade difference on scores of friendship quantity, and girls scored higher than boys, the children in the fourth grade have the maximum number of friends.3. Gender difference was found in positive friendship quality and negative friendship quality, and girls scored higher than boys in positive friendship quality , the contrary was the case in negative friendship quality. Furthermore, there was significant grade difference on scores of negative friendship quality, the children in the sixth grade scored higher than those who were in the fourth grade.4. Positive friendship quality can versus predict loneliness directly, and negative friendship quality can forward predict loneliness directly;friendship quantity and negative friendship quality can predict loneliness indirectly by positive friendship quality.5. Peer acceptance which can't predict loneliness by friendship quantity can forward predict friendship quantity and positive friendship quality, and peer acceptance predict loneliness by positive friendship quality, positive friendship quality has partial mediator effect between peer acceptance and loneliness.7. There was significant time-testing difference on scores of positive friendship quality, after a year of interval children reported significantly higher scores of positive friendship quality. After 1-year interval, the change of friendship quantity has a significant impact on peer acceptance ,but the change of positive friendship quality hasn't significant impact on peer acceptance8. Results from Logistic regression analyses indicated that gender and positive friendship quality can predict the stability of children's friendship.