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Sociologists since Simmel have been interseted in social circles as essential features of friendship networks. Although network analysis has been increasingly used to uncover patterns among social relationships, theoretical explanations of these patterns have been inadequate. This paper presents a theory of the social organization of friendship ties. The approach is based upon Homans's concepts of activities, interactions, and sentiments and upon the concept of extra-network foci organizing social activities and interaction. The theory is contrasted with Heider's balance theory. Implications for transitivity, network bridges, and density of personal networks are discussed and presented as propositions. The focus theory is whosn to help explain patterns of friendships in the 1965-66 Detroit Area Study. This paper is intended as a step toward the development of integrated theory to explain interrelationships between networks and other aspects of social structure. Inplications for data analysis are discussed.

Longitudinal sociometric data on adolescent friendship pairs, friends-to-be, and former friends are examined to assess levels of homophily on four attributes (frequency of current marijuana, use, level of educational aspirations, political orientation, and participation in minor delinquency) at various stages of friendship formation and dissolution. In addition, estimates are developed of the extent to which observed homophily in friendship dyads results from a process of selection (assortative pairing), in which similarity precedes association and the extent to which it results from a process of socialization in which association leads to similarity. The implications of the results for interpreting estimates of peer influence derived from cross-sectional data are discussed.

Various recent studies have shown the friendship behavior of men & women to differ. To explore the impact of life cycle stage on these differences, interviews were conducted with a cross-sectional sample of 1,050 adults living in 50 northern Calif localities in 1977, & 6 life cycle stages were compared: age 35 or younger -- unmarried/childless, married/childless, & married with children; age 36-65, married with children, & married/childless; & age 65+. Analysis shows that for the younger ages, structural differences in the positions of men & women appear to reduce the opportunities of women to form friendships; these can be attributed to positions in the work force, in marital roles, & in parenthood. In later years, men's friendships decrease while women's increase. Related factors include reduced opportunities for men, reduced constraints on women, & a persistently stronger disposition of women to form friendships. 1 Table. W. H. Stoddard.

This study examines the effects of five attributes--authority, education, sex, race, and branch assignment--on the proximities among the members of five professional organizations in networks of instrumental and primary relations. (Author)

This article considers the influence of neighborhood social contexts on the content of social networks. Contextual explanations for individual behavior argue that (1) individual preferences and actions are influenced through social interaction, and (2) social interaction is structured by the social composition of the individual's environment. Thus, a preliminary step to constructing contextual theories of individual behavior is an examination of the way that the social context structures social encounters and friendship choice. The empirical correspondence between the content of neighborhood social contexts and the content of social networks is examined using a sample of white male Detroit residents. A mathematical model of associational choice is developed that incorporates the ability of individuals to enforce social preferences on their choice of friends while it maintains the role of the social context in structuring that choice.

Third- and fourth-grade socially isolated children were coached in social skills. The coaching condition included (1) instructions from an adult in social skills relevant to friendship making, (2) playing games with peers to practice social skills, and (3) a postplay review session with the coach. In a second condition (peer pairing), isolated children played the same games with the same peers but did not receive verbal instruction or review. In a third condition (control), isolated children were taken out of the classroom with the same peers but played solitary games and did not interact or receive verbal instruction or review. Pretest-posttest sociometric assessment of the 4-week training indicated that the coaching group increased on a play sociometric rating significantly more than the peer-pairing and control groups. The coaching children also received a greater but nonsignificant gain in friendship nominations. No significant findings were obtained on the work sociometric rating or on behavioral measures. A follow-up assessment 1 year later indicated continued progress on the play sociometric rating for the children who had received coaching.

This paper examines bias toward status-similarity in adult friendships in Detroit and a West German city. Principles of meeting and “mating,” by which strangers are converted to acquaintances and acquaintances to friends, are stated. One of these, the proximity principle, claims that the more similar people are, the more likely they will meet and become friends. This principle is tested in matrices of friendship choice for twelve social characteristics. Two statistical measures of bias are used (odds ratio and marginal ratio) and their properties discussed. Compared to a random-choice model, adult friendships show strong bias toward status similarity for all social characteristics. Bias is strongest for “edge” categories of ranked statuses and for “best” friends. The less similar two people are in social characteristics, the less likely they are to be close friends. Demographic characteristics tend to show more bias toward homogeneous choices than other characteristics. These findings are explained and further analyses of adult friendship structure and dynamics are discussed.

Using panel data from a junior high school system in an urban area of Florida we investigate adolescent friendship structure along the dimension of sexual behavior. White females and white males tend to name same-sex friends whose sexual intercourse behavior is like their own. Sexual intercourse is not a significant factor in accounting for adolescent friendship structure among blacks, males or females. We then specify models which permit us to answer whether observed homogeneity bias in sexual behavior is due to a process of influence, deselection, and/or acquisition. The sexual behavior of white females is influenced by their same-sex friends' sexual behavior. These is no evidence that adolescents deselect friends on the basis of dissimilarity in sexual behavior. Both white males and white females acquire friends whose sexual behavior is like their own. We suggest that race-sex differences with respect to degree of adolescent-friend similarity in sexual behavior and the sources of this similarity may center around differences in group relevance or salience of the sexual act and race-sex differences in the nature of friendships.