Belonging in Diverse Contexts: Sociability among Same-Ethnic and Cross-Ethnic Peers

• In Event: Innovations in Social Network Methods for Examining the Role of Peer Processes in Youth Development

Abstract

Background:
School belonging is crucial to identity development, academic success, and well-being in adolescence (Allen et al., 2018). There is growing evidence that peers, in particular friends, are critical to students’ perceptions of their connection to school (Allen & Kern, 2017). What we do not fully understand, however, is how school belonging can be fostered within friendships, and whether friends influence one another’s sense of belonging. We expect yes, and as such the next question is: which friends matter in a diverse school context?

Innovations:
The gap in our understanding stems largely from methodological limitations: the literature has been limited by a reliance on observations of general measures of peer support, selected friends or peer groups and on self-reported approaches to assess peer group influences rather than the whole system of peer relationships in a grade or school (Ryan et al., 2019; Ryan & Shin, 2018). However, friendships are better understood as dyadic relationships that are embedded within the larger school context, and it is likely that within these friendships that the socio-emotional aspect of school belonging is shaped (Hamm & Faircloth, 2005). Moreover, in a diverse school context it is important to consider the ethnic dynamics and thus the extent to which same- or cross-ethnic friends can influence feelings of belonging in school (Graham & Echols, 2018). To overcome these shortcomings, we apply a novel multivariate network science perspective to simultaneously examine same-ethnic and cross-ethnic friend influence on school belonging.

Methods:
We draw on two large, diverse U.S. high schools (N=4454; 50% girls) with students in 9th to 11th grade followed across three waves of data within 12 months (April 2017-2018). Students were asked to name their ten closest friends at school of any gender and from any grade. Students were also asked about their own connectedness to school on a 5-point scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” (5 items: e.g., “I feel close to people at this school”, alphas:.84-.86). To account for the grouping structure in the large school friend networks, available demographics (gender and grade) and shared extra-curricular activities were included in the analysis. We estimated a pooled model that constrained estimates to be equal across schools while recognizing that friendships were not possible between students in different schools. Following Snijders et al. (2020) the networks were split into same-ethnic and cross-ethnic friendships, which allowed us to separately estimate influence within the two types of friendships.

Results:
The positive total similarity effect provided evidence for social influence (Table 1): adolescents became more (or stayed) similar to their friends in school belonging over time. This effect peaked when friends scored on average 3 or 4 on the 5-point scale for school belonging and increased with the number of friends the adolescent had (Figure 1). These patterns were similar for same- and cross-ethnic networks. These novel findings highlight how feelings of school belonging can be fostered through sociability in same- and cross-ethnic friend groups. Implications for interventions and other approaches to enhance school belonging will be discussed.

Authors

• Johannes Ashwin Rambaran, Universiteit Utrecht
  Non-Presenting Author

• Adam J. Hoffman, Cornell University
  Presenting Author

• Deborah Rivas-Drake, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author

• David Schaefer, University of California - Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Allison M Ryan, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author