Friendship plays a significant role in people’s lives (Allan, 2008; Giddens, 1991). Social scientists have paid considerable attention to friendship and documented its various aspects (Allan, 1979, 1989; Ayata, 2002; Pahl, 2000; Yanıklar, 2001). However, as Wellman, Wong, Tindall, and Nazer (1997, p. 28) argued, changes in the set of people who form a friendship network have been largely ignored. Indeed, friendship is presented as a static phenomenon in the majority of studies, and, consequently, only a snapshot of the patterns of ties is on offer (Suitor, Wellman, & Morgan 1997). However, it can be expected that membership in friendship networks is continually in flux. As Bidart and Degenne (2005) put it:
[Friendships] have a history that shows how the relationship between context and behavior changes over time. Each friendship network is the result of a process of construction and recomposition that takes place over time. This process is responsible for the form of the friendship network as a result of the addition, disappearance, breaking, or formation of friendship ties. (p. 3)

When considering the dynamics of personal networks, some scholars have provided information about stability and instability in the friendship networks of a specific (e.g., widows) or a general population. For example, in a study using interview techniques Morgan, Neal, and Carder (1996) reported that instability in personal networks is an important phenomenon. In a different context, Wellman et al. (1997) analyzed changes in intimate ties in personal community networks. Their analysis was based on data obtained from interviews conducted a decade apart with 33 Torontonians. They found that there was a high turnover in these networks, with only 27% of intimate ties persisting and various life events having differential effects on turnover. Similarly, in another study, Pahl and Pevalin (2005) described the changes in friendship choices over time. They also pointed out the importance of studying the changing character of personal networks.

Friendship in the Turkish context has not attracted a great deal of attention from researchers. Instead of focusing on friendship patterns, many researchers have investigated the changing character of neighborhood or kinship relations in the context of urbanization (Demir, 1998; Vergin, 1985). These authors suggest that, in an urban setting, kinship and neighborhood relations are relatively strong, but they do not provide information about the changing character of friendship ties.

Although friendship (as one of the constituents of personal communities) is very much gendered, most researchers neglect the issue of gender when dealing with the nature of friendship. Sex segregation is evident in friendships, which is a manifestation of important gender-based mores. Gender differences in the nature of the instability in friendships may also be expected (see, e.g., Tampubolon, 2007). Moreover, changes in social circumstances that contribute to this instability may affect women and men differently. Therefore, I examined the extent and nature of instability in friendship in men and women using two snapshots of friendship.

I also examined whether or not the strength of friendship ties (understood here in terms of the ranking of friends as closest, second closest, or third closest) is related to the degree of change in friendship. There are several indicators of tie strength in personal networks, such as whether the intimates provide everyday or emergency social support, as well as the frequency of intimates’ face-to-face and telephone contact. However, as is clear from the literature, ranking friendship in terms of social closeness can also be used to gauge the strength of friendship ties (Granovetter, 1973; Wellman et al., 1997).

Finally, I assessed the impacts of changes in social circumstances that shape this instability over time. In a number of studies, scholars have pointed to the importance of the various events and factors that shape changes in people’s social networks and friendships over time. For instance, Wellman et al. (1997) identify domestic changes (comprising marital status changes and child rearing changes), employment changes, and change of residence as factors that have differential effects on social network ties (see also Tilly & Brown, 1967). Similarly, Bidart and Lavenu (2005) highlight various life events that are likely to influence changes in the individual ties of personal networks. They found that demographic life events, such as birth, marriage, and death, were significant. Events in the labor market, such as being made redundant or entering the labor market for the first time, were also deemed important. In the latter case this effect was found to be closely correlated with leaving school for most of the respondents. Bidart and Lavenu also found that geographical mobility influences changes in personal networks. In this study, I analyzed the impact of the changes in these social circumstances on the instability of friendship networks over time. I focused on demographic changes, geographical mobility (such as changing residential area or moving to another place), and employment changes (such as getting a job, changing a job, or retiring).

I addressed the following questions in this study:
(1) Are there important differences in the magnitude of changes in friendship ties in terms of gender or age?
(2) Does the strength of social closeness make a difference in the persistence of friendship ties?
(3) To what extent do changes in people’s immediate social circumstances affect their friendship ties?

Method

Participants and Procedure

Statistical Analysis

All analyses were performed using SPSS version 16.0. Each participant was assigned a code and questions were coded before raw data for each respondent were entered. The percentage and frequency values for participants’ answers were calculated. Thereafter, in order to determine whether or not there was a statistically significant difference regarding changing friendship in terms of gender and age the Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis tests were conducted, because the sample was small and related data were not normally distributed according to the result of Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (p >. 05). In addition, multiple regression analysis was used in order to determine the extent to which changes in social circumstances affected turnover in friendship ties.

Results

All of the interviewees were married in 2005. However, 6% of the male respondents and 3% of the female respondents were divorced or widowed by 2010. Respondents’ educational levels were relatively high; 43% of the females and 63% of male respondents possessed at least a university degree. A total of 13% of male respondents had a vocational high school level of education and 25% had a high school level of education. The corresponding figures for females were 8% and 38%, respectively. In addition, 11% of female respondents had reached the junior high school or a primary school level of education and none of the males fell into this educational category. It should be pointed out here that almost all white-collar jobs in Turkey currently require a minimum of a university level of education. However, at the time some of the participants in my study took up their occupations, a secondary level of education may have been sufficient because there was a shortage of educated people.

The majority of male participants (84%) were in full-time employment and a minority were retired when the first set of interviews was conducted. Approximately 14% of them changed jobs during the intervening five-year period. However, despite their relatively high level of education (as a group in the context of Turkish society), the number of female participants in paid employment was much lower than was the number of male participants who were in paid employment: only 30% of female participants were in full-time employment, 3% were in part-time employment, and 5% were retired. If the most recent occupations of retired people are included, 41% of male respondents were in professional, administrative, and managerial occupations and the rest were in semiprofessional and routine white-collar occupations. Comparable figures for female respondents were 21% and 79%, respectively.

In presenting the findings on changes in friendship ties, it is important to note that although there is cross-gender friendship between young or unmarried people in Turkey, our data showed that the participants in this study did not have close cross-gender friendships. During the interviews none of our respondents reported having a close friend of the opposite sex.

Data on the proportion of changes in friendships ties over five years, in terms of the gender of the respondents, showed that, although there was a relatively high level of stability, that is, the proportion of those whose closest friends remained the same was around 40%, more than two-thirds of male respondents (69%) and more than half of female respondents (54%) changed at least one of their closest friends. Approximately 38% of men reported that 1 of their 3 closest friends had changed and more than one-sixth (15.6%) of the men reported that two of their closest friends had changed. Among the women, 27% reported that one of their closest friends changed after five years and 16% reported that they had two different closest friends. In 2010, 16% of the men and 11% of the women had an entirely new set of closest friends as compared with those they named in 2005. In terms of gender, only 31% of men retained all of their closest friends during the five-year period, whereas 46% of women did not change any of their closest friends. These figures suggest, firstly, that there are some differences between men and women in terms of patterns of changing friendship and, secondly, that female friendships are more stable.

However, when I analyzed whether or not gender is important in changing friendship, the results (see Table 1) showed that there was no significant difference between the male and female participants in my study regarding changing friendship in terms of gender. It was also found that men tend to change their friends more than women do.

Results in Table 2 also suggest that, in general, friendship ties were not stable and the magnitude of changes was notable. For example, when naming the person who was their closest friend, this person was different for 25% of the male participants in 2010, compared with 2005. This tendency was similar for female participants; in 2010 slightly fewer than 1 in 5 women named a different person as their closest friend as compared with the person they had named in 2005. As the figures in Table 2 suggest, although not significant there is a gender effect when the figures for the males are compared to those for the females.

More importantly, the figures clearly demonstrate that the closest ties are more durable. As seen in Table 2, the likelihood of both male and female participants changing a friend ranked third closest is two times higher than that of changing the friend ranked as the closest of three close friends. Both women and men have a similar tendency to change their second and third ranked closest friend. Generally, as the degree of social closeness decreases, a gradual increase in the possibility of change in friendship ties was observed. For men and women, ties with the second closest friends were weaker in a real sense than were ties with the first closest friends, and so on.

In terms of the extent that changes in people’s immediate social circumstances affect the nature of their friendship network of closest friends, Wellman et al. (1997, p. 41) reported that people’s social circumstances change as they age. Therefore, I reasoned that age should be taken into account when analyzing the association that other changes in social circumstances have with alterations to intimate social networks.

My data indicate that there are some differences in the degree of change in friendship ties according to respondents’ ages. In general, the closest friends of young people changed the most, followed by those of the oldest age group. It was the group aged between 30 and 39 in 2005 that stood out as having the highest rate of change in their closest friends during the five-year period. For example, only 8% of these participants retained all their ties, and the comparable figure for those aged between 18 and 29 was 14%.

Table 3 shows that in 2010 21% of the youngest age group and 23% of the second youngest age group did not name any of those they listed in 2005 as their closest friends in their 2010 list. On the other hand, the friendship networks of other age groups did not undergo much change during the five-year period; of the people aged between 40 and 49 and those aged 60 and over, approximately half (53% and 50%, respectively) had retained the same friendship ties, as the figures in Table 3 clearly suggest. The friendship networks of people aged between 50 and 59 were the most stable during the five-year period, with 69% retaining their friendship network.

The results of the Kruskal Wallis test (see Table 4) confirm these findings. The results indicate that there was a statistically significant difference between respondents’ age groups regarding changing friendship.

Differential impacts of events in people’s lives can be observed in the process of changing friendships. In Table 5 attention is drawn to the significances of the effects of changes in people’s immediate social circumstances. Geographical changes are shown to have the most significant effect on the likelihood of changes in friendship choices. As seen in Table 5, demographic changes, such as getting married or divorced had the next most significant effect. Although employment changes are shown to have the third most significant effect, this category captures different processes that can lead to changes in friendship. Entering the labor market for the first time, changing one’s job, retiring, or moving upwards occupationally are all significantly associated with changes in friendships.

It is important to note that the adjusted R² value in Table 5 gives a useful measure of the success of the model, as it accounts for 58% of the variance in changing friendship. But this also means that other factors not captured in the model may also have a significant effect on changes in friendship.

The results in Table 6 confirm the results presented in Table 5. The effects of each life event on changing friendship were not substantially different for men. There was also a similar tendency for women when geographical and demographic changes occurred. But the results in Table 6 suggest that changing friendships differed significantly according to gender, especially with respect to the effect of employment changes. There were also differences between the results for women who were in paid employment and those who were not, in terms of changes in friendships.

Discussion

In this study, I found that there was significant stability in friendship networks over a five-year period and yet, at the same time, there was a considerable amount of change among those ranked as closest friends by the participants in the study. However, this finding should not be interpreted as people losing two-thirds of their friendship ties. In fact, a more valid assessment of the friendships changes observed in my study was made by Morgan et al. (1996). Namely, that friendship networks are generally composed of both a persistent core of ties that are maintained over time and a periphery of ties that are regularly replaced.

In this study, I found that female friendship is relatively more stable as compared to male friendship. There could be many explanations for why female friendships tend to be more stable, but one possibility is that friendships among women are, perhaps, more about affirmation of identity than about instrumentality, which is, arguably, less stable than identity (Tampubolon, 2007). However, according to my findings there was not a strong gender effect on changes in friendship networks.

The data presented here support the findings of some other researchers (see, e.g., Adams & Blieszner, 1994; Duck, 1983; Perlman & Fehr, 1987; Wellman & Wortley, 1990) who have examined the effects of social closeness on the persistence of friendship ties. I found that strong ties are more likely to persist than weaker ones. The degree of intimacy and social closeness clearly affects the possibility of changing friends for both men and women. The degree of intimacy also works in the same direction for both men and women.

My findings indicate that the likelihood of changes in friendship ties is significantly related to respondents’ age group (see Table 3). In general, results for age form an inverted U shape. For young people change in their personal communities of best friends is unavoidable in most cases. In this age group, transformations are an expected phenomenon; young people are more likely to change place of residence and work. Equally, there is also a high probability that young people and their friends will be subject to more demographic changes. Therefore, their social networks change a great deal. Friendship is much more stable when people are in the middle age group. However, in old age a decrease in stability of social networks can be observed. In old age, it is very likely that retirement and death of friends contribute to the decrease in friendship networks.

Changes in social circumstances accounted for much of the turnover that respondents and their friends experienced. The data suggest that, despite the fact that the participants were not geographically mobile in terms of their residential situation during the five-year period, geographical changes had a strong effect on friendship change owing to the fact that some of the respondents’ close friends moved away from the area. But there are two points to be considered here. First, my sample consisted of white-collar workers. Geographical mobility is common amongst white-collar workers in Turkey, especially among those who are government employees, because they are frequently assigned to a new post (Yanıklar, 2001). Therefore, the high rates of instability in friendship ties could be attributed to the relatively high geographical mobility of respondents’ friends who, it can be expected, were also white-collar workers. Second, some of the respondents’ friends were neighbors in 2005. This may be another reason why geographical mobility has a significant effect on the stability of respondents’ friendship networks. Over time, because of geographical mobility, neighbors move away and people are forced to make new friends. As has been reported by previous researchers (Phillips, Bernard, Phillipson, & Ogg, 2000; Wellman & Wortley, 1990), geographical distance often results in communication difficulties, decline in contact, and not getting support, which may cause friendships to weaken and fade away. In other words, geographical mobility appears to constrain friendships and when intimate friends stop being geographically close, the friendship markedly weakens and may, in the long run, cease altogether.

Demographic life events such as birth, marriage, and death have significant effects on changing friendships. Such changes compel people to embark on a different stage of family life or a new lifestyle with new responsibilities and this social adaptation results in a turnover of intimate ties. However, my findings show that demographic changes were ranked second, after geographical mobility, in terms of impact on changing friendships.

To a lesser extent, I found that employment changes had an important impact on changes to closest friends. This finding differs from the results of some researchers (see, e.g., Fischer, 1982; Wellman et al., 1997) who found that employment-related changes are not significant in explaining changing friendship. Pahl (2000) argued that people “were less likely to expect to find close friends at work: the occupational communities had gone and increasing competition meant that colleagues at work became potential rivals” (p. 117). Yet, such an argument may not be valid in the Turkish context. As Özcan (1983) points out, individuals in Turkey are not encouraged to be competitive; instead, emphasis is put on values such as helping, sharing, and togetherness. My results suggest that in the case of Turkish white-collar men, work acquaintances and colleagues are likely to become close friends. This finding supports my (2001) suggestion that Turkish workers have a high degree of job security and are not competitive in general. Therefore, there is likely to be a positive correlation between changing jobs and changing friendship in the Turkish setting.

It is important to note that life events are often interdependent. Therefore, the impacts of these events on changing closest friends are likely to be interdependent. As a generalization it can be claimed that when changes in people’s social circumstances occur, changes in the friendship networks of closest friends are almost unavoidable. This also means that, to a significant extent, the stability of a friendship network depends on the stability of people’s social circumstances. If people’s social circumstances are not stable the relationship markedly weakens or ceases altogether. However, as Wellman et al. (1997) suggest, new friendship ties emerge to replace those that have weakened or disappeared.

In this study, gender effect has been taken into account in explaining the dynamics of friendship. I found a gender effect on changing friendship. The data presented here also show that changes in social circumstances do not have the same degree of effect for women and men in terms of changing friendship. In other words, men and women tend to experience the changes in their networks differently with regard to employment status, moving house, or being subject to demographic changes. For women, including those who were in paid work, employment changes (or more precisely their working life) did not appear to have an important impact on changes to their closest friends. For men geographical change was statistically the most significant change in social circumstances related to changing friendship ties; for women demographic change was the most significant change in social circumstances related to changing friendship ties.

The findings in this study revealed patterns similar to those found in Western countries. Thus, it may be argued that changes in networks of closest friends over time display some universal characteristics, although not necessarily in the same combinations or with the same degree of emphasis. However, there are several limitations associated with the findings in this study. For example, the scope of this study does not capture acquaintances or less consequential relationships as I focused only on closest friends. In addition, the relative homogeneity of the sample did not enable me to address certain issues, for example, class differences. It is also the case that there is little basis for generalizing and comparing the findings of this study because of the nature and the small size of the sample as well as the limited availability of scholarly research on this topic in Turkey. Nonetheless, in this study I attempted to enrich understanding of both stability and instability in people’s personal relationships over time in the context of the Turkish white-collar middle class.

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Cengiz Yanıklar, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University, Rize, Turkey. Email: [email protected]