91快活林

Although psychological evidence suggests that social support broadly facilitates the development of psychological resilience in adulthood, little is understood about the particular role of best friendships in this regard. Dr Rebecca Graber led this preliminary study which hypothesised that a better quality best friendship would positively impact the development of psychological resilience in a community sample of British adults.

The study analysed whether better perceived close friendship quality significantly predicted subsequent psychological resilience at 12-month follow-up, controlling for earlier resilience; 75 adults completed the questionnaire.

A community sample of 185 adults based in the UK was recruited through online social networking sites, university events and community organisations supporting socially isolated adults.

Participants completed assessments on psychological resilience, best friendship quality, coping behaviours and self-esteem. Participants then completed the same assessments one year later, to see how best friendship quality had impacted resilience processes over this period. Longitudinal regression and bootstrapped multiple mediation analyses were used to explore the results.