Key references:
Furman, W. & Buhrmester, D. (1985). Children's perceptions of the personal relationships in their social networks. Developmental Psychology, 21, 1016-1022.
Primary use / Purpose:
Background:
We developed the Network of Relationships Inventory (NRI) to be able to examine a broad array of relationship characteristics across a number of different types of personal relationships (Furman & Buhrmester, 1985). The most important feature of the NRI is that participants use the same set of items to describe their relationship with each of several members of their social network (e.g., mother, father, sibling, friend, romantic partner, and teacher.). This feature results in a matrix of “relationships by qualities” scores that is useful both for describing average (mean-level) differences among different types of relationships and for describing each type of relationship in terms of a profile of qualities. The matrix of scores has also proven useful in measuring of individual differences in relationship qualities, allowing researchers to examine the similarities and differences among various relationships and to evaluate how individual differences in relationships qualities are associated with other individual outcomes (e.g., loneliness, depression) and relationship outcomes (e.g., stability of relationships).
Psychometrics:
We have published two papers that explicitly address the validity and reliability of selected scales (Furman, W. [1996] The measurement of children and adolescents’ perceptions of friendships: Conceptual and methodological issues. In W. M. Bukowski, A. F. Newcomb, & W. W. Hartup (Eds.), The company they keep: Friendships in childhood and adolescence (pp. 41-65), Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press; Furman, W. & Buhrmester, D. (2009) The Network of Relationships Inventory: Behavioral Systems Version, International Journal of Behavioral Development, 33, 470-478.
Additional validational information can be obtained from the studies using the measure.
