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The study of gender differences is a pervasive topic in relationship science. However, there are several neglected issues in this area that require special care and attention. First, there is not just one gender effect but rather three gender effects: gender of the respondent, gender of the partner, and the gender of respondent by gender of the partner interaction. To separate these three effects, the dyadic research design should ideally have three different types of dyads: male-female, male-male, and female-female. Second, the analysis of gender differences in relational studies could benefit from the application of recent advances in the analysis of dyadic data, most notably the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model. Third, relationship researchers need to consider the confounding, mediating, and moderating effects of demographic variables. We use the American Couples (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983) data set to illustrate these points.

Selection and socialization have been implicated in friendship homophily, but the relative contributions of each are difficult to measure simultaneously because of the nonindependent nature of the data. To address this problem, the authors applied a multiple-groups longitudinal actor-partner interdependence model (D. A. Kashy & D. A. Kenny, 2000) for distinguishable dyads to 3 consecutive years of intoxication frequency data from a large community-based sample of Swedish youth. Participants, ranging from 12 to 18 years old (M = 14.35, SD = 1.56) at the start of the study, included 902 adolescents (426 girls and 476 boys) with at least one reciprocated friend during at least one time point and 212 adolescents (84 girls and 128 boys) without reciprocated friends at any time. Similarity estimates indicated strong effects for selection and socialization in friends' intoxication frequency. Over time, younger members of these dyads had less stable patterns of intoxication than older members, largely because younger partners changed their drinking behavior to resemble that of older partners. Keywordshomophily; actor-partner interdependence model; friendship formation; nonindependence Scholars have long recognized that individuals who affiliate with one another tend to be similar on key behaviors, traits, and attributes (Lazarsfeld & Merton, 1954). The question arising from this observation is tantalizingly simple: What are the origins of this similarity? Of particular interest is similarity between friends because of the widespread concern that some friends may promote antisocial behavior. Concerns about deviant socialization have proven difficult to document, however, because friendship similarity may also be a product of the tendency of youth to select friends who behave in a similar manner (Cairns & Cairns, 1994 Kenny, 2005;Kashy & Kenny, 2000;Kenny & Cook, 1999), modified for multiple groups, described similarity and change in friends' intoxication frequency across 3 consecutive years.Homophily is a dyadic construct that describes similarity between friends. Two distinct processes account for this similarity. Selection emphasizes preexisting similarities that are the basis for the establishment of a friendship. Socialization emphasizes resultant similarities that are the product of participation in a friendship. It seems likely that both contribute to homophily: Youth select friends who are similar on salient characteristics, and they socialize one another in a manner that increases these similarities.An early study of homophily implicates selection and socialization in the deviant behavior of high school friends (Kandel, 1978). Similarity was measured with Kendall's τ at two time points across the academic year. Selection effects were represented by similarity estimates before and after the establishment of friendship for those who were not friends at the outset but who became friends later. Socialization effects were represented by similarity estimates at both time points for those who remained friends o...

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