Interpersonal conflict

This study examined associations between friends, perceptions of conflict and friendship qualities. Early adolescent participants and their same-sex friends (N = 199 dyads) separately completed measures describing actual disagreements, friendship positivity, and negativity. Similar patterns of associations emerged for participant and friend reports of conflict and relationship qualities. Actor and partner associations were estimated with two statistical methods, the APIM (Kashy & Kenny, 2000) and the IDM (Griffin & Gonzalez, 1995). Actor associations suggested perceptions of conflict were linked to self-perceptions of friendship negativity and positivity. Partner associations suggested perceptions of conflict were linked to partner perceptions of friendship negativity, but not to partner perceptions of friendship positivity.

Evidence suggests that self-reports of the frequency of an event, the most common way of measuring rates of conflict, are an unreliable source of data and that minor changes in question format can result in major changes in the results obtained (Bless, Bohner, Hild & Schwarz 1992; Schwarz, 1991; Schwarz, 1999; Winkielman, Knauper & Schwarz, 1998). In the conflict literature, different studies report different rates of conflict and different associations between conflict frequency and individual adjustment. Therefore, the present study examined how alterations in the measurement of conflict frequency affected how many conflicts participants reported and whether different measures of conflict were differentially associated with psychological adjustment outcomes (i.e., alcohol use, drug use, depression, delinquency, and interpersonal support). Response scales, reference periods, and question formats of conflict measures were manipulated to examine differences in conflict frequency reports. Results indicate that the changes in conflict measurement produce varied amounts of conflict across conditions and that changes in the measurement of conflict frequency change the associations between conflict frequency and adjustment outcomes.