The Role of Peers in Adolescents’ Task Values: Disentangling Peer Selection, Influence, and Deselection Processes

• In Event: Subjective Task Values and Influences on Their Development From an International Perspective

Abstract

Peers form important contexts for motivational development during adolescence (Eccles [Parsons], 1983; Wentzel, Barry, & Caldwell, 2004). More specifically, research has found that peers’ intrinsic values (a component of task values) for schooling significantly predict changes in the corresponding values of individuals (Ryan, 2001). However, little research has examined the roles of peers in the development of task values for specific school subjects. Do peers influence each other’s task values for different subjects, and if so, how? Are these processes the same across different school subjects? To explore these issues, this study investigated selection, socialization and de-selection effects on adolescents’ task values for three academic subject areas (languages, math and science, and social sciences) and the non-academic subject areas (the arts and physical education). Peer selection refers to the process in which individuals choose to associate themselves with particular peers, while de-selection refers to the process that individuals detach themselves from some particular friends (Kandel, 1978, see also Van Zalk, Kerr, Branje, Stattin, & Meeus, 2010). Socialization describes the process by which individuals conform to the beliefs or behaviors of their peers over time.
Our study used two waves of longitudinal data collected from school-based networks of adolescents in Finland at a one-year interval (N = 949; age at the first measurement point = 16 years old). At each measurement point, participants were asked to report their task values for each subject area and nominate up to three same-grade schoolmates whom they most liked to spend time with. Peer effects on task values were assessed using actor-based models of network-behavioral dynamics (Snijders, Steglich, & van de Bunt, 2010) implemented with the SIENA program (Snijders et al., 2007). The results revealed that, as for the arts and physical education, adolescents tended to select/deselect friends with similar/dissimilar levels of task values (i.e., selection and de-selection effects were significant), but changes in task values were not related to that of their friends (i.e., socialization effect was insignificant). Opposite results were found for the other three subjects: socialization effect was significant but both selection and de-selection effects were insignificant. These findings suggests that to a significant extent, adolescents make agentic choices in developing/dissolving friendship with schoolmates based on their task values in non-academic subjects. The resulting peer contexts that individuals created for themselves would in turn, affect their task values in academic subject areas. These findings shed lights on the complexity of peer effect mechanisms on task values at the subject-specific level.

Authors

• Angela Chow, University of Alberta

• Noona Kiuru, University of Jyväskylä

• Philip David Parker, University of Western Sydney

• Jacquelynne Eccles, University of California - Irvine

• Katariina Salmela-Aro, Cicero Learning, University of Helsinki