title: The goal of making friends for youth with disabilities: creating a goal menu.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Clinicians working with youth with disabilities have acknowledged making friends as a commonly identified client goal. Clinicians find this goal difficult to address, as there are no measures that provide a breakdown of making friends into functional steps. In addition, research on friendship has traditionally focused on characteristics and quality of friendships rather than the friend-making process as a whole. A goal menu, comprised of a variety of steps that address the goal of making friends, would provide guidance to clinicians challenged with this goal in practice.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To develop an understanding of the friend-making process as a first step towards the development of a goal menu for the goal of making friends.
  
  
  METHODS
  A literature review, youth focus group and expert clinician semi-structured interviews and consultation were used to generate a comprehensive data set. Established qualitative methods were used to sort and group the data into categories. A thematic analysis of the categories was performed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Analysis revealed four themes integral to the friend-making process: person factors influencing friend-making, making friend-making a priority, opportunity for friend-making and motivation to make friends. An additional theme identified as occasionally involved in the process was a little bit of luck in making friends.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The themes generated by this research indicate that actionable target areas exist for the somewhat abstract notion of friend-making and the authors recommend that clinicians explore beyond person factors when addressing the goal of making friends. As a next step, the identified themes will provide the foundation for a goal menu, ultimately enabling clinicians to address the goal of making friends in a more efficient and effective manner.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine, Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, The University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gerhardt
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine, Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, The University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: McCallum
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine, Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, The University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.|Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: C
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6779-3792
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: McDougall
authors.affiliation: Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada.|Bloorview Research Institute, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Keenan
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine, Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, The University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.|Bloorview Research Institute, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rigby
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D033062:Friends; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009864:Ontario
keywords: disabilities; friend; friendship; goal; life skills; youth