(PS6-74) Examining Friendship Stability in Youth at Risk for ADHD

Friendship – a voluntary, intimate, reciprocal relationship between two individuals – facilitates critical social skills in childhood, reduces risk for victimization, increases current and future self-esteem, and increases future academic engagement and success. Stability of friendship entails the retaining of a friendship over time and can help buffer against adjustment difficulties and loneliness. Most children with ADHD experience lower peer acceptance, but we know little about their friendship difficulties, which are distinct from peer acceptance, and especially unknown is their friendship stability, which can offer more information about friendship than assessing it at only one time point (e.g., friendship quantity). Studies have indicated that children with ADHD may have fewer stable friendships compared to their peers. However, prior research has only examined length of the friendships over short time periods and in restricted settings (e.g., summer camp, research lab), which may not generalize to those formed and maintained in everyday settings (e.g., classroom), and friendships were not corroborated by both individuals in the dyad and therefore may not have been reciprocal. The goal of this study was to examine the friendship stability among children with elevated ADHD symptoms and lower peer acceptance relative to their peers over an academic year in a school setting. Specifically, across both groups, we will examine (1) the number of stable friendships over the year and (2) the predictors of stable friendships.

Data were collected from 32 K-5 classrooms in the context of the Making Socially Accepting Inclusive Classrooms (MOSAIC) intervention (Mikami et al., 2022). Each teacher identified three to five target students based on teacher ratings of elevated symptoms on the ADHD-5 Rating Scale and peer acceptance ratings on the Dishion Social Acceptance Scale. We defined friendship stability as having a reciprocated friendship with the same child in September and in April based on friendship nomination data obtained via sociometrics. We counted the number of stable friendships and categorized each child as having or not having stable friends. Baseline analyses have been conducted: chi-square tests assessed the relationship between child target status (target vs. non-target) and categorization of number of stable friends (0 vs. 1 or more). Non-target children were significantly more likely than target children to have stable friends, χ²(1, N = 524) = 10.971, p < .001, OR = 1.96. We found that 50.0% of target children had no stable friends, compared to 33.8% of non-target children. Additionally, 26.9% of target vs. 33.2% of non-target children had one stable friend; 16.2% of target vs. 20.3% of non-target children had two stable friends; 6.2% of target vs. 9.1% of non-target children had three stable friends; and 0.8% of target vs. 3.5% of non-target children had four or more stable friends. Predictors of friendship stability will be presented at the conference.

 Our findings underscore that the friendship difficulties faced by children with ADHD may extend to friendship stability. This line of research will help us discover ways to enhance current or develop new interventions to increase stable friendships for children with ADHD.