Our research program has focused on middle school and high school adolescents' social networks and more recently on adolescents' romantic relationships. The adolescents in our studies have taught us a number of lessons about studying personal relationships. We use examples from our research to illustrate these lessons and discuss their implications for studying adult, as well as adolescent, relationships. In particular, adolescents have taught us to recognize the multi-leveled nature of networks and to distinguish among the interactional, dyadic relationship, group and overall levels of networks. The diversity of adolescent relationships presents researchers with the methodological and conceptual challenge of identifying and taking into account the similarities and differences among relationships. Research with adolescents also makes one appreciate the developmental trans-formations that relationships undergo. We describe changes in the absolute level and relative level of characteristics, the stability and centrality of characteristics, and their structure. We discuss implications of the idea that development occurs at the individual level, and distinguish between developmental trajectories and the timing of such trajectories.
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