My ARIA research project was an extension of the work I did during the academic year as a part of an honours thesis I wrote with the Child and Adolescent Social Competence Lab. My project was about social support in young adult friendships. I was particularly interested in investigating the factors that may play a role in shaping how supported someone feels when interacting with a friend.
For emerging adults, having high-quality, supportive friendships is associated with a wide range of benefits, including increased life satisfaction (Gan et al., 2020). Although friends are an important source of social support in emerging adulthood, minimal research has investigated what factors are associated with emerging adults’ perceptions of support during interactions with their friends. My research project explored the associations between friendship quality and observed support on perceptions of support during interactions between same-gender pairs of young adult friends. Same-gender friendship dyads (N=133; 66.2% female; 18-24 years, M age = 19.63, SD = 1.35) participated in a 2-hour in-lab study. Dyads were recorded completing the Problem Talk Task (Rose et al., 2016), each speaking about a current problem for 8 minutes while their friend listened, then switching roles. Next, participants rated their perceived support received from the friend during the task. Finally, undergraduate volunteers watched the videotaped interactions and provided ratings of observed support received by each participant. A total of N=6 scores per video were aggregated to create a single score for observed support received. Actor Partner Interdependence Models showed that higher ratings of friendship quality by the speaker predicted better perceptions of support received by the speaker. Additionally, better ratings of observed support received predicted better perceptions of support received by the speaker. These findings highlight the importance of both friendship quality and observed support as they relate to perceived support in emerging adult friendships, which could have broader implications in the development of clinical interventions.
My ARIA Experience
I was interested in completing an ARIA research project this summer because I was hoping to get more involved in the research process within McGill’s psychology department and continue to develop my skills as a researcher. This summer, I hoped to learn more about the “behind the scenes” aspects of academic research and participate in different steps of the research process, from data collection to data management to putting together a manuscript!
I was lucky enough to be able to experience all this and more through my internship with the Child and Adolescent Social Competence Lab under the supervision of Prof. Melanie Dirks and graduate student Erin Macdonald. I was involved in a variety of tasks, including data collection, data management and analysis, literature searches, and writing. I particularly enjoyed getting the chance to work as part of a team with other interns and graduate students who were always available to provide advice and guidance for my various projects. I also loved participating in data collection with teenage participants within an ongoing study on friendship functioning and emotional expression. Not only did I learn how to administer and score various questionnaires and tasks, but I was also able to make connections with the young people who were participating in our research! I would say that my greatest challenge this summer has been managing the many different tasks I had on the go at any given moment and knowing what to prioritize and how much time and effort to dedicate to each task. By creating a spreadsheet to track my task progress, I was able to stay on top of my work and visualize the steps I needed to take to complete each task.
This ARIA internship experience has solidified my interest in continuing to pursue psychological research in my graduate studies and hopefully in my future career. The skills I have learned this summer will be invaluable as I continue to explore my interests in the field of developmental psychology. I would like this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to the AUS for their generous contributions that have allowed me to have this amazing ARIA internship experience. It is an honor to be a recipient of this award, and I am excited to use the experiences I had this summer to help guide my future research endeavors. Thank you for your generosity and for investing in the future of undergraduate research! I am truly grateful for your kindness and support.
