Evered Jane A
Author Affiliation: University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Philadelphia.
Cancer Nurs. 2020 Mar/Apr;43(2):E61-E70. doi: 10.1097/NCC.0000000000000686.
Friendship is a complex social phenomenon important to human development, emotional health, and socialization. While making and maintaining peer friends are an emphasized task of adolescent and young adult development, the multidimensional experience of friendship is incompletely defined, particularly in the context of adolescents and young adults with cancer.
The aim of this study was to investigate the nature of friendship more deeply and completely by breaking down and then rebuilding meaning in this phenomenon.
The author searched 8 databases for relevant literature and conducted a dimensional analysis of the textual data from articles found in database searches and theoretical sampling. Dimensional analysis was an inductive process of determining all the components and attributes of the friendship concept. The author broke down and built up the meaningful units of friendship until a story of friendship in adolescents and young adults with experience of cancer emerged.
Data from 80 empirical and theoretical articles published from 2013 to 2018 formed the literature base for this dimensional analysis.
An explanatory matrix built from the perspective of "Time Marking" reveals contexts, conditions, processes, and consequences that together provide an explanation of the nature of friendship in this population.
This concept analysis, combined with the limitations of this inquiry, impels future empirical and theoretical research and implies preliminary clinical implications. In particular, the understanding of friendship as conceptually distinct from social support and the experience of friendships in narrative time suggest a need to reconceptualize supportive care services for adolescents and young adults who experience cancer.
友谊是一种复杂的社会现象，对人类发展、情绪健康和社交活动至关重要。虽然结交并维持同龄朋友是青少年和青年发展过程中一项重点任务，但友谊的多维度体验尚未得到充分界定，尤其是在患有癌症的青少年和青年这一背景下。
本研究旨在通过剖析并重建这一现象的意义，更深入、全面地探究友谊的本质。
作者检索了8个数据库以查找相关文献，并对数据库检索及理论抽样中找到的文章的文本数据进行维度分析。维度分析是一个归纳过程，用于确定友谊概念的所有组成部分和属性。作者剖析并构建友谊的有意义单元，直到呈现出一个患有癌症的青少年和青年的友谊故事。
2013年至2018年发表的80篇实证和理论文章的数据构成了此次维度分析的文献基础。
从“时间标记”角度构建的解释矩阵揭示了背景、条件、过程和结果，这些共同阐释了该人群友谊的本质。
这一概念分析，结合本研究的局限性，推动了未来的实证和理论研究，并暗示了初步的临床意义。特别是，将友谊在概念上与社会支持区分开来，以及对叙事时间中友谊体验的理解，表明有必要重新构想为患有癌症的青少年和青年提供的支持性护理服务。
