Summary Report on a Questionnaire Survey of Young People's Communications and Relationships with Friends and Parents

  This report describes the main results of a questionnaire survey of 16 and 17 year-old people in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Questionnaires were sent by mail on March 2002 to 800 persons selected by random sampling method, and 387 valid answers were returned. The questions were about interpersonal attitudes toward friends and parents, the amount of communication with them, the frequency of using a mobile phone and email, and so on. This survey is characterized by common questions to compare friend- and parent-relations. The survey results show; 40% of females think of their mother as a friend rather than as a parent; a mobile phone takes the role as a remote controller to change communication channels among friends according to occasions, and email is a communication tool to cultivate closer relations with friends; 41% of email users communicate with mothers, though only 20% with fathers.