Abstract
A study was carried out to investigate the extent of friendship between British and overseas student nurses and factors which might be associated with the formation or otherwise of such friendships. The student sample studied was restricted to female general student nurses, and because the hospitals were not randomly selected results cannot be generalized beyond the hospitals studied. British student nurses were more likely to form friendships with other British student nurses and overseas students more frequently formed friendships with other students from overseas. Differences in attitude between British and overseas student nurses were found on the F scale, Religious and Social value of the study of values, in attitudes toward nursing and the nurses role. The two groups of students in an interview recollected their arrival at the hospital and arrangements for their welfare early in training, as different. A multivariate analysis of variance of responses to a behaviour differential (based on Triandis 1964) showed some social distance toward a stimulus person defined in terms of age and place of origin, especially on items loading on an intimacy-disclosure factor. Use of PREFMAP (Carrol and Chang 1969) showed friendship preference for stimulus persons characterized by nationality to be related to their positions in a common INDSCAL stimulus space. A friendship factors questionnaire showed that British and Asian student nurses expected stimulus persons representing nurses from other parts of the world to show smaller degrees of those qualities thought desirable in a friend than stimub persons representing nurses from their own part of the world. Student statomento of qualities they look for when choosing a friend supported the similarity hypothesis of friendship choice. Results in general supported oxisting theories of friendship.