Friendship Quality in Adolescents With and Without an Intellectual Disability

High friendship quality is defined as both positive and negative features in which a friendship should have high levels of intimacy, companionship and closeness and low levels of conflict. Quality of friendship research is important to examine in adolescents with or without intellectual disabilities (ID) to examine not only the differences but also the predictors of successful peer relationships. Additional parent perception was added in this study to examine the differences between parent and adolescent views of friendship.Participants were 106, 13-year old adolescents with (N=78) or without intellectual disabilities (N=28). Results demonstrated significant differences between both adolescent and parent reports of adolescents' friendship. Significant predictors of friendship qualitywere found using both social skills and behavior problems