The relationship between psychological adjustment, best-friend acceptance–rejection, and peer attachment during late adolescence

The aim of the present study was to realize the transliteral equivalence of the "Best- Friend Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire" for Turkish population (Study I) and to study the relationship between psychological adjustment, perceived best-friend acceptance rejection and peer attachment of late adolescents along with gender differences (Study II). To carry out the transliteral equivalence process of Best- Friend Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire for Turkish population and to test its reliability, 60 university students who were bilingual in English and Turkish were given the two forms in Study I. The Turkish form was found to be transliterally equivalent to the original English Form and the reliability was found to be strong (Cronbach's α = .87) The sample for the second study consisted of 441 undergraduate university students. The materials for data collection included the following: (1) a demographic questionnaire, (2) Best-Friend Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire (BFARQ- Turkish Form), (3) child version of the Personality Assessment Questionnaire (PAQ- Turkish Form); which measures the psychological adjustment level, and (4) Peer Attachment Scale (subscale of IPPA-T-Turkish Form). The investigation for the research questions about the relationship between best-friend rejection, peer attachment and psychological maladjustment was carried out by correlation to explore the relationships between the phenomena and by regression analysis to explore the impact of best–friend rejection and peer attachment on psychological maladjustment. It was found as expected that peer attachment was significantly negatively correlated with best friendship rejection (r = -.546, p < .01) while it was significantly and positively related with psychological maladjustment (r = .49, p < .01). Best –friendship rejection was also significantly negatively related with psychological maladjustment (r = -.438, p < .01). The results showed that, poor peer attachment was the best predictor of psychological maladjustment (β =.37) followed by best-friend rejection (β = .24). The gender of the participants did not affect this relationship in any way analyzed in this study.