ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a study that highlights that similarity with respect to personal network patterns and use of frames of reference tend to be peer-oriented, but not associated with similarity or direction of evaluation of the current helping. Most similarity was found among dyads who used kin-oriented paradigms of helping and arrived at similarly negative evaluations of the helping. The study was exploratory in the sense that it began to apply the concept of meaning, and methods of measuring meaning, to the specific context of helping roles and relationships. The fact that "people can and do associate helping in general, with one or more familiar sets of role relations" suggests at least two lines of future research. The first involves greater precision in measurement and a more rigorous application of the canons of research methodology. The second involves qualitative research in order to achieve "intimate familiarity" with an expectation that the richness and complexity can be further explored and explicated.
