Friends of Urban Men: An Assessment of Accuracy in Reporting Their Socioeconomic Attributes, Mutual Choice, and Attitude Agreement

This analysis of friends of urban men is guided by methodological and substantive considerations. Methodologically, we have assessed the accuracy with which respondents report social attributes and characteristics of their friends. Errors are less frequent for relatively objective characteristics (age, occupation) than for the less visible and public characteristics of the friend (political attitudes). Where errors occur, they are in the direction of the respondent ascribing his own characteristics to his friend. Substantively, we have addressed ourselves to the question of estimating the degree of mutual choice of friends in an adult urban population, friends being named unconstrained by any criteria of selection, and of assessing the degree of attitude similarity between friends and the relevance of reciprocated choice in enhancing attitude similarity. Reciprocity of friendship choice is seen to be related to frequency of contact, closeness of the friendship, and spatial proximity. In, addition, there is some support for the hypothesis that reciprocity of friendship is associated with a greater homogeneity of attitudes than is the case in nonreciprocated pairs of friends.