Conference Agenda

The study of peer perception is important in the context of social network analysis because the subjectively perceived place of individuals in a group influences their behavior within the group (Krackhardt, 1987).

In many cases, research exploring social networks takes for granted the ability of the research subjects to accurately assess social relations within a group. How incorrect this assumption is demonstrated by the fact that research that analyses the accuracy of social perception highlights the biases that impair this accuracy. Marineau et al. (2018) have shown that the mere fact of how many possible diads could potentially arise in a relatively small network, is itself a serious cognitive challenge for individuals.

The causal relationship between accuracy of peer perception and position in the formal hierarchy also varies across the literature: some authors, e.g. Krackhardt (1990), argue that position in the group does not affect peer perception accuracy, while others, e.g. Simpson et al. (2011), argue that it does influencing this ability.

In the current research I applied the Locally Aggregated Structure (LAS) reduction of the Cognitive Social Structure (CCS) – in the Krackhardt sense of the notions – as data were collected nominally with the classical sociometric methods developed by Moreno (1960). The study examines the impact of accurate social status perceptions on the status of individuals within groups lacking formal hierarchy. This investigation was conducted in six high school classes.

Labeling theory suggests that when a stigmatizing event occurs, an individual may be labeled by others or self-label as undesirable, potentially leading to social rejection or withdrawal in the aftermath. Recent studies have found that both tie withdrawal and rejection can partially explain decreased academic performance following suspension. Simultaneously, connections to friends within schools have a protective effect against both suspension and dropout. In the current study, we use panel data on friendship networks of adolescents to examine: How much of the effect of suspension on school dropout is mediated through friend tie withdrawal versus tie rejection? We measure tie withdrawal as the number of friends a respondent fails to nominate from wave 1 to wave 2. Tie rejection is measured by the number of re-nominations a respondent does not receive from wave 1 to wave 2. We analyze data from the Context of Adolescent Substance Use longitudinal survey, which collected 7 waves of in-school surveys from 2002 to 2004, following three cohorts in grades 6-8 from 19 schools across three rural and semi-rural, racially diverse North Carolina counties. We combine this survey data with administrative school discipline records from the North Carolina Education Research Center, providing official suspension and dropout documentation for each student from 2002 through 2011. The sample includes 4,975 adolescents. Preliminary findings indicate that suspended students are more likely to withdraw from friendships than experience friendship rejection, and this withdrawal partially mediates the relationship between suspension and subsequent school dropout.

In the United States, startling increases in adolescent depression, anxiety, and suicide have catapulted adolescent mental health onto the public agenda. Although adolescence is generally viewed as a time of emotional precarity, research shows that some adolescents are more susceptible to mental health issues based on factors like psychosocial stress, minoritized social identities, social media use, and substance use. All of these factors reflect traits of the focal adolescent. Less explored is how adolescent mental health is associated with their peers and peer networks. The objective of this study is to determine how an adolescent’s peer environment (network size, peer mental health, peer substance use, and peer bullying) contributes to four mental health outcomes (borderline/clinical: depression, anxiety, panic disorder, social phobia) above and beyond the effects of identity, psychosocial, and behavioral factors. Drawing on data collected from a large cohort of adolescents (n = 2,302) from 14 high schools in Southern California, I perform hierarchical regressions on each binary outcome, introducing identity, psychosocial and behavioral, and peer-related variables in subsequent blocks. Unsurprisingly, gender identity (being a cis-female and being trans/non-binary), psychosocial stressors, and social media activity are consistent predictors of poor mental health. Peer factors also contributed to poor mental health but more idiosyncratically across outcomes. Network size increased the likelihood of anxiety, peer marijuana use increased the likelihoods of anxiety and depression, having friends with social phobia increased the likelihood of personal social phobia, and peer-based bullying increased the likelihoods of anxiety, panic disorder, and social phobia.

Cooperative exchange networks are important to the livelihood strategies of small-scale food producers worldwide. Such networks are considered to support food security and climate change resilience, particularly because they may buffer households from variation in harvests. However, the processes that impact how and why cooperative exchange networks change over time are not well-understood, because this is a complex issue that invokes a panoply of empirical, statistical, and theoretical challenges. It has been suggested, for instance, that static interaction networks stabilize cooperation (in experimental settings), but in real-world settings turnover in nodes is inevitable as individuals or households progress through the life-cycle.

Here, we investigate how the formation of new households impacts the structure of cooperation networks, using data on food sharing networks collected in Kangiqsujuaq, an Inuit community in Nunavik, Canada, in 2013 and 2023. In this context, interhousehold exchange of traditional foods like caribou and fish are critical for food security and nutrition, but the increasing cost of living in Arctic settlements, cultural loss, and climate change are considered to be potential threats to these networks.

Preliminary analyses indicate that households reported slightly more sharing partners in 2013 than in 2023, a surprising initial finding given prevalent concerns about network erosion. However, there was a considerable increase in housing stock in the settlement between the two study periods. This means that there are many "splinter" households, mostly formed by (now adult) children who lived with their parents during the 2013 study. Our richly-detailed survey dataset, combined with our long-term participant observation in the community, allows us to identify these households and their "origin" households in 2013.

We explore the hypothesis that the observed increase in sharing ties from 2013 to 2023 is driven by this change in housing availability. Specifically, we examine whether the "splintering" of households lead to previously invisible intra-household sharing now being documented as inter-household ties. This analysis provides important theoretical insight into how the common life-cycle phenomenon of household nucleation impacts the structure of exchange networks in a real-world setting. It also provides useful information for our community partners, who are concerned that the current housing situation has weakened family sharing ties and are motivated to develop community programs to support the access of younger generations to traditional foods.

Despite the well-established link between social networks and knowledge in the literature, empirical evidence on the association between power within classrooms and network knowledge is limited. Prior studies have relied on theoretical assumptions about cognitive social networks or used cross-sectional designs, limiting our understanding of these associations over time. To address these gaps, this study used panel data to examine whether and how accuracy in network knowledge is associated with a student's structural position within classroom social networks, as measured by degree and closeness centralities. Network knowledge was measured as the objective accuracy of students' perceptions regarding who is considered popular within their peer networks. Using five waves of the Korean Study of Adolescent Health (KSAH, 2022–2025), we conducted random-effects analyses. Results showed that students higher in power—indicated by higher degree and closeness centralities—were significantly less likely to have accurate network knowledge, after adjusting for individual characteristics (degree centrality, p<0.05; closeness centrality, p=0.001). Interestingly, students with higher outdegree centrality (i.e., those frequently nominating others as close friends) were likely to have lower accuracy in network knowledge, whereas indegree centrality was not statistically associated with accuracy. These findings indicate that structural positions within adolescent networks may act as a critical relational resource to the accuracy of network knowledge, underscoring the importance of the relationship between individual power and understanding of social networks.