Modified Project Summary/Abstract Section During adolescence, friends meet more of youths’ relationship needs, including needs for support. Importantly, despite hundreds of studies focused on friends, relatively few studies have considered friendships between girls and boys. Learning more about friendships between girls and in adolescence, however, is important as the prevalence of these friendships increases during adolescence. Moreover, better understanding these friendships is especially important for girls because girls seem to be at a disadvantage in these friendships. Specifically, boys perceive the friendships to be more supportive than girls. The gap in the literature is that the’ specific behaviors in these friendships associated with positive perceptions of the friendships are unknown. This gap will be addressed in the proposed research by observing 60 friend dyads consisting of one boy and one girl (120 adolescents). Given the importance of social support to friendship, friends’ interactions will be observed in a context in which the adolescents disclose a problem, and friends can provide support (or not). Friends’ responses to adolescents’ disclosures about personal problems will be coded into response categories. Some of these are engaged and positive (e.g., sharing a related experience) and some are disengaged and negative (e.g., minimizing the problem). In a large previous study of friendships, we found that girls produced more engaged/positive responses than boys and that receiving engaged/positive responses from friends was associated with positive perceptions of the friendship. The following hypotheses will be tested in the proposed research. Findings are expected to replicate previous research indicating that boys perceive their friendships with girls more positively than girls perceive their friendships with boys. In addition, girls are expected to produce more positive/engaged responses than boys. Receiving engaged/positive responses from friends also is hypothesized to be related to perceptions of the friendships as supportive and close (no hypotheses are put forth for disengaged/negative responses). Importantly, a line of research that identifies specific behaviors in cross-gender friendships that are associated with positive perceptions of the friendship could have significant and applied implications for programs aimed at promoting positive interactions. Finally, the proposed research is innovative both in the focus on friendships between girls and boys and the application of a very detailed and nuanced coding system.