Friendship and social support: The importance of role identity to aging adults

This article proposes role identity theory as a means of integrating the di verse: frameworks and findings that populate the social support literature, and it highlights the importance of the friendship role on life satisfacti on for aging adults. A sample of 800 preretirement-age working men and wome n were surveyed as part of a longitudinal study, Roles and Self: Factors in Development and Retirement. The results include differences in social supp ort by gender no significant influence of structural support variables, and the significant effect of the role of friendship an respondents' life sati sfaction. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that commitment to the ro le of friend is significant in predicting life satisfaction when controllin g for background variables, and friendship identity meanings emerged as the strongest predictor-stronger than income or marital status-when predicting well-being. integration of theory with current and previous research, impl ications For practice, and directions for future research are discussed.