Designing and validating the friendship quality on social network sites questionnaire

Social network sites (SNSs) provide adolescents with the opportunity to expand their social circle, which is associated with increased social capital. However, the social capital adolescents built depends on the quality of their friendships on SNSs. As no instruments are available to capture the quality of friendships on SNSs, this study designed and validated the Friendship Quality on Social Network Sites questionnaire (FQSNS-questionnaire). The questionnaire consists of five dimensions: satisfaction, companionship, help, intimacy, and self-validation. Explorative and confirmative factor analyses were applied on data of 1.695 friendships (i.e., offline-to-online, online-to-offline, and online friendships) gathered from 1.087 adolescents. Results pointed to a five-factor solution, applicable to any kind of friendship on SNSs and reflecting the proposed five dimensions of friendship quality. Multiple group confirmatory factor analyses supported measurement invariance across younger and older adolescents, and across boys and girls, at the levels of equal factor structure and loadings. Cronbach's alphas indicated a good internal consistency of each dimension. Correlation analysis indicated that the dimensions were strongly correlated to each other, which is unsurprising because they reflect the overall friendship quality. Based upon these results, we can conclude that dimensions of friendship quality can validly and reliably be assessed using the FQSNS-questionnaire.

"The aim of this study was to develop a questionnaire which can validly and reliably assess dimensions of friendship quality on SNSs - the Friendship Quality on Social Network Sites questionnaire (FQSNS-questionnaire). The questionnaire consists of five dimensions: satisfaction, companionship, help, intimacy, and selfvalidation. The analysis was applied on data of 1.695 friendships (i.e., offline-to-online, online-to-offline, and online friendships) gathered from 1.087 adolescents in 14 Flemish schools. The multiple group analyses supported measurement invariance across younger (12-15 years old) and older (16-19 years old) adolescents, and across boys and girls at the levels of equal factor structure and loadings. A correlation analysis indicated that the dimensions were strongly correlated to each other. This is in line with our expectations as the dimensions reflect the overall friendship quality. Besides the insight into the dimensions of quality, the questionnaire provides a better understanding of what kind of social capital can be gathered on SNSs. average scores were the highest on satisfaction and companionship. The average scores on help, intimacy, and self-validation were slightly lower, but still high. This suggests that the benefits derived from bonding (strong ties) and bridging (weak ties) can be closely coupled within a high-quality friendship on SNSs." (Verswijvel et al., 2018, pp. 296-297)