Social network development and functioning during a life transition.

A 12-week longitudinal study of the development of social support networks among college freshmen is presented. Eighty-nine male and female students who lived either in university residence halls or at home with their parents completed a series of questionnaires in which they described their social networks while attending college and their adaptation to university life. In accord with an ecological view of social support, the structural and functional characteristics of the freshmen's networks were found to vary with the focal individual's gender, living situation, and the temporal stage of the network. Further, network characteristics were significantly associated with the freshmen's successful adaptation to college, though the relative adaptiveness of particular network characteristics varied over time.