Friendship quality among Indonesian first-year university students: Trust-based mediation through self-disclosure and online communication

Friendship plays a crucial role in fulfilling first-year students’ need for social connection. The transition to university requires students to adapt and build meaningful peer relationships. This study aimed to develop a friendship quality model and examine whether trust directly influences friendship quality or indirectly through self-disclosure and online communication. A quantitative, non-experimental design was employed with first-year university students recruited through convenience sampling. Data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The proposed model demonstrated a good fit with the data. Trust was positively associated with self-disclosure and online communication, which were in turn positively associated with friendship quality. Trust also showed a stronger direct association with friendship quality than its indirect associations through self-disclosure and online communication. These findings suggest that trust may play a central role in developing high-quality friendships by reducing uncertainty in social relationships and facilitating interpersonal adjustment during the transition to university.