School Cohort Cohesion and Adolescent Violence (Poster 20)

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

This study tests alternative hypotheses regarding how social cohesion within a student’s school cohort shapes their involvement in violence. Norm enforcement and social control theories anticipate that cohorts characterized by more cohesion (e.g., more friendship ties within rather than beyond the cohort) will be more prosocial and reduce student involvement in violence. Research on youth resistance and conflict suggests the opposite however, anticipating that heightened cohesion within a school cohort leads to more interpersonal conflict and ultimately a greater risk of violence among students. This study tests these alternative hypotheses with extensive data on network and social climate features of school cohorts from Waves I-II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Results first indicate that there is more variation in respondents’ reports of same-cohort friendship nominations and interpersonal conflict between cohorts within schools than there is between schools themselves. Negative Binomial models for violence perpetration indicate that youth in cohorts with a higher rate of same-cohort friendships are more involved in violence, even when controlling lagged violence perpetration. This association is observed net of controls for between-school differences (school fixed effects), cohort-level interpersonal conflict, SES, racial composition, and size, as well as a host of individual-level variables capturing at-school experiences, respondents’ network positions, family and neighborhood resources, and sociodemographic factors. Consistent with the resistance and conflict perspectives, these results indicate that exposure to more socially cohesive school cohorts puts youth a heightened risk of violence involvement. Implications for school-based anti-violence initiatives are discussed.

Author

• Nicolo P. Pinchak, University of Oxford
  Presenting Author