Conference Agenda

How are enmities among school children formed? This question has been asked by at least two strands of research: studies of school bullying, aiming to understand and prevent violence among students in general; and studies of social mixing at school, trying to understand under what conditions students from different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds can bond.

A first hypothesis is that enmities are shaped by social and relational distance, following a mechanism of discrimination and group identity: Students primarily dislike or harass others dissimilar to them, particularly in socioeconomic and ethnic terms, as well as others belonging to different groups of peers. Conversely, another hypothesis is that proximity generates enmities, following a mechanism of competition: Students primarily confront others that resemble them, as well as potential rivals within their own peer group. In network terms, this translates into two related questions: what is the effect of attribute dissimilarity on the formation and maintenance of negative ties? And what is the effect of structural equivalence – i.e., having similar positions within the friendship networks?

To answer these questions, I use Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models (SAOM) applied to the coevolution of friendship, dislike and bullying networks in four French middle schools. 861 students were surveyed over 30 months, allowing to reconstitute grade-level complete networks. I also provide qualitative evidence from these schools to help interpret statistical results.

Results suggest that structural equivalence in the friendship networks increases the odds of conflicts, both for disliking and bullying ties. On the contrary, attribute dissimilarity has little to no impact, with the exception of academic performance. Theoretical as well as policy implications are discussed.

Support and connectedness are primary elements of students’ sense of belonging. Comprehensive college transition programs (CCTPs) provide multi-pronged support for college students. Research demonstrates these programs often improve students’ sense of belonging by providing an intentional community for students (Cole et al., 2019). CCTPs are associated with desired outcomes such as student well-being, retention, and persistence (Melguizo et al., 2021). Social network analysis allows for a deeper understanding of community formation within CCTPs. Sense of belonging is conceptualized at multiple levels such as broadly to the university or within specific groups such as a class. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether belonging impacts friendship networks among students involved in a CCTP throughout one semester. At a large university in the USA, three freshmen CCTP classes were surveyed at weeks 4 and 14 of the semester. Employing separable temporal exponential random graph modeling, networks were analyzed for friendship tie formation and dissolution. Classmates were significantly likely to form ties based on their university-level sense of community across all three classes (parameter estimate range=0.56-1.63, ps .001-.008). University-level sense of community was significant in ties persisting throughout the semester in two out of three classes. Results indicate class-level sense of community was not impactful for student friendships. This study argues promoting a university-level sense of community is important for undergraduate students’ friendships throughout CCTPs. Therefore, CCTPs prioritizing fostering a sense of belonging to the university rather than to the smaller cohort may see greater friendships.

Relationships with peers, and friends in particular, are a crucial element of adolescent development and well-being. These friendships, like other interpersonal networks, are embedded and influenced by the larger community, and a rich history of social-ecological research links community characteristics to problem- and health-related behaviors. Most studies of peer dynamics, however, have been limited in their ability to investigate how adolescents’ broader community shapes the interplay between friendships and these behaviors. In this presentation, we outline an approach for connecting these literatures through a research project that combines longitudinal assessments of adolescents’ health behaviors, their friendship choices, and their specific communities. Our project builds on existing survey data from a trial of the PROSPER prevention model across 28 communities. In addition to measures of health and well-being, these data contain social network friendship data covering all students who are enrolled in the same school and grade. We show that geocoding the students’ home addresses allows for the creation of measures that capture the specific community context of each individual. By combining these community data with the students’ existing friendship and survey data, this project will provide new opportunities to examine the joint contribution of communities and friendships to adolescent health and well-being.

Most studies, including our research on Russian schools, have found that ethnic homophily is usually asymmetric with ethnic majority students being “ethnically blind” (i.e., not giving a clear preference to friendships with other majority students) and ethnic minority students tending to form ties with peers of similar background. At the same time, in some studies interethnic relationships were found to be dependent on ethnic composition of schools. Our previous research on adolescent networks was based on schools with relatively low presence of ethnic minority students (mostly 15-20 percent). To discern the effects of ethnic composition of schools on homophily in adolescent networks we recently sampled schools in Russian cities with varying presence of minorities, including ones with 70-85% of minority students. Fitting exponential random graph models for 97 classroom networks, the study explores the friendship preferences of ethnic majority and minority students. Preliminary findings reveal that both ethnic minority and majority students exhibit a preference for forming connections with peers of the same ethnicity, and while the share of ethnic minority students relates to ethnic minority homophily in a non-linear manner, no significant effect of class composition was observed for ethnic majority homophily. These results and their discussion will be presented at the conference.

Recent research shows that positive leaders in elementary schools excel at building relationships, while negative leaders use aggression to achieve personal goals (Dong et al., 2023). Another study found that negative leaders are detrimental to classroom well-being, while positive leaders also pose challenges - especially for girls, who experience lower self-esteem and increased depressive symptoms, illustrating the healthy context paradox (Dong et al., 2024).

This presentation builds on these studies by using multiplex longitudinal social network analysis to examine the role of positive ann negative leaders in the co-evolution of friendship and defending behaviors. We examine whether positive leaders are more likely than negative leaders to defend non-friends or to cross gender boundaries. Using two waves of KiVa NL data from one school year (fall and spring), we analyze 59 classrooms with only positive leaders, 29 with only negative leaders, and 25 with both.

Despite similar friendship network structures in these settings, cross-gender defending by positive leaders leads to cross-gender friendships more often than when negative leaders do the same. However, when negative leaders defend a peer, friendships tend to form or persist, whereas for positive leaders, defending does not predict friendships. Regarding the development of defending relationships, the stochastic actor-oriented models show that same-gender friendships are a much stronger predictor of a defending relationship for negative leaders than for positive leaders.