What do we mean by ‘friend’? an inductive study

Fischer, Claude S.

doi:10.1016/0378-8733(82)90004-1

Cited by 280 publications

(140 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…One may choose to use an imprecise name generator like "Name your friends" instead. On the other hand, much of the imprecision in the concept of friendship lies in notions of friendship that differ among informants (Fischer 1982). We recommend against a name generator like "close friend" (at least in adult samples like ours) unless additional information is collected on type of relationship in order to interpret the meaning of the name generator to the informant.…”

Section: Time Framementioning

confidence: 94%

“…Kogovsek and Ferligoj (2005) report that responses to questions about behaviors of alters (frequency of contact) are more consistent and more accurate than emotional questions (closeness) (see also Clair et al 2003;Harvey et al 2004). Fischer (1982), for example, found a great deal of variation in how informants interpreted the term "friend." Thus, an imprecise concept like friendship (Brewer & Webster 1999) or acquaintanceship (Brewer 1993;Sudman 1985) may have higher levels of "forgetting" because of the indeterminacy of the threshold (where does the difference between "friend" and "not-friend" lie on the dimension of emotional closeness) or the indeterminacy of the alter's relation to the threshold at any interview (is the emotional closeness to this alter above or below the cut-off).…”

Section: Behavioral Specificitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Partner naming and forgetting: Recall of network members

Bell

Belli-Mcqueen

Haider³

2007

Social Networks

112

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Section: Time Framementioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Behavioral Specificitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Partner naming and forgetting: Recall of network members

Bell

Belli-Mcqueen

Haider³

2007

Social Networks

112

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“…"Friendship" on Facebook certainly means different things to different people (cf. Fischer, 1982b), and -as we will show -network behavior varies not only with demographic traits but also with online activity. Such issues should be carefully considered when interpreting these data, particularly for those interested in generalizing beyond Facebook (strictly speaking, a "virtual" environment) to "real-life" social relationships.…”

Section: Natural Research Instrumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tastes, ties, and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook.com

et al. 2008

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a b s t r a c tScholars have long recognized the potential of Internet-based communication technologies for improving network research-potential that, to date, remains largely underexploited. In the first half of this paper, we introduce a new public dataset based on manipulations and embellishments of a popular social network site, Facebook.com. We emphasize five distinctive features of this dataset and highlight its advantages and limitations vis-à-vis other kinds of network data. In the second half of this paper, we present descriptive findings from our first wave of data. Subgroups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status are characterized by distinct network behaviors, and students sharing social relationships as well as demographic traits tend to share a significant number of cultural preferences. These findings exemplify the scientific and pedagogical potential of this new network resource and provide a starting point for future analyses.

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Section: Ruling Out Alternative Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since the term friend is ambiguous and can be used by people to characterize a great many "non-relative others" in a fairly unsystematic fashion (Fischer, 1982), we sought to operationalize friendship as nonworkrelated interaction via two items (Cronbach's alpha = .62). The regression results for Equations 3-5 in Table 3 were unchanged with or without this friendship variable, which was not statistically significant in these equations in any event.…”

Section: Ruling Out Alternative Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Strength of Weak Ties You Can Trust: The Mediating Role of Trust in Effective Knowledge Transfer.

Levin¹,

Cross²,

Abrams³

2002

AMPROC

315

491

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Recent research suggests that people obtain useful knowledge from others with whom they work closely and frequently (i.e., strong ties). Yet there has been limited empirical work examining why this is so. Moreover, other research suggests that weak ties provide useful knowledge. To help integrate these multiple findings, we propose and test a model of two-party (dyadic) knowledge exchange, with strong support in each of the three companies surveyed. First, the link between strong ties and receipt of useful knowledge (as reported by the knowledge seeker) was mediated by competence-and benevolence-based trust. Second, once we controlled for these two trust dimensions, the structural benefit of weak ties became visible. This latter finding is consistent with prior research suggesting that weak ties provide access to non-redundant information. Third, we found that competence-based trust was especially important for the receipt of tacit knowledge. We discuss implications for theory and practice. 3Promoting knowledge creation and transfer within organizational settings is an increasingly important challenge for managers today (Kogut & Zander, 1992). Organizations that can make full use of their collective expertise and knowledge are likely to be more innovative, efficient, and effective in the marketplace (Grant, 1996;Wernerfelt, 1984). Yet ensuring effective knowledge creation and transfer has proven a difficult challenge. At least three separate literatures-on social networks, trust, and organizational learning/knowledge-have addressed aspects of the knowledge transfer problem. We propose and test empirically a theoretical approach that synthesizes these three streams. Structural Characteristics of Knowledge TransferSocial network researchers have offered clear evidence of the extent to which knowledge diffusion occurs via social relations (e.g., Rogers, 1995). Work dating to Pelz and Andrews (1968), Mintzberg (1973), andAllen (1977) indicates that people prefer to turn to other people rather than documents for information. For example, Allen (1977) found that engineers and scientists were roughly five times more likely to turn to a person for information than to an impersonal source such as a database or file cabinet. More recently, Cross (2001) found that even people with ready access to well-populated electronic and paper-based sources of information reported seeking information from colleagues significantly more than from these sources. In general, researchers have found relationships to be important for acquiring information (Burt, 1992); learning how to do one's work (Lave & Wenger, 1991); making sense of ambiguous environments or events (Weick, 1979); and solving complex problems (Hutchins, 1991).Social network theorists have focused much of their attention on structural properties of networks (Adler & Kwon, 2002), such as structural holes at the network level (Burt, 1992) and tie strength at the dyadic level (Granovetter, 1973). Tie strength characterizes the closeness of a relationship between two...

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What do we mean by ‘friend’? an inductive study

Cited by 280 publications

References 4 publications

Partner naming and forgetting: Recall of network members

Partner naming and forgetting: Recall of network members

Tastes, ties, and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook.com

The Strength of Weak Ties You Can Trust: The Mediating Role of Trust in Effective Knowledge Transfer.

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