An inductive analysis of relational maintenance strategies: Comparisons among lovers, relatives, friends, and others

TLDR

The study develops a typology of relational maintenance behaviors based on inductive analysis of student essays about maintaining different relationships. The analysis identified ten major maintenance strategies—positivity, openness, assurances, sharing tasks, social networks, joint activities, cards/letters/calls, avoidance, anti‑social, and humor—extending Stafford and Canary’s typology and showing that positivity, openness, assurances, sharing tasks, and cards/letters/calls varied in frequency across lovers, relatives, friends, and others.

Abstract

This investigation reports a typology of maintenance behaviors that were derived through inductive analyses of papers students wrote about their strategies for maintaining various relationships. Ten major strategies were inductively derived: positivity; openness; assurances; sharing tasks; social networks; joint activities; cards/letters/calls; avoidance; anti‐social; and humor. These strategies extend the previous research on relational maintenance strategies. More specifically, the latter five strategies and the subcategories of all the strategies are additions to Stafford and Canary's (1991)typology. In addition, analyses revealed the positivity, openness, assurances, sharing tasks, and cards/letters/calls differed in their frequency of use among lovers, relatives, friends and others.