Social Competence, Parental Promotion of Peer Relations, and Loneliness among Adolescents

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between social competence, parental promotion of peer relations, and loneliness among adolescents. The study comprised three parts; Part I dealt with the translation of Parental Promotion of Peer’s Relations Inventory (Adel, 2004), and Loneliness and Social Dissatisfaction Scale (Asher, Hymel, & Renshaw, 1984). Part II pertained with the cross language validation of these scales. In Part III, the translated scales were administered along with Social Competence Scale (Shahzad, 2002) to a sample of 98 adolescents (48 boys, 50 girls). Results showed significant positive relationship between social competence and parental promotion of peer relations; whereas both the variables were negatively related with loneliness. ttest revealed that children of employed mothers reported significantly higher parental promotion of peer relations, and that children of less educated mothers experienced significantly more feelings of loneliness as compared to the children of highly educated mothers. However, there were non significant gender differences in relation to the variables of the study.