Friendship Suspended: Toward a Longitudinal Social Network Analysis of Labeling Theory

• In Event: Consequences of School Suspension, Delinquency, and Police Contact

Abstract

Labeling theories suggest that official sanctions like school suspension or arrest may increase rather than deter subsequent delinquency. Researchers often imply that this association is mediated by the labeled individual’s withdrawal and rejection from prosocial peer networks and support or acceptance among delinquent peer groups. However, the effect of sanctioning on such changes in peer networks has yet to be established empirically. Social network analysis combined with panel data methods allow me to examine the effects of sanctioning on changes in friendship preferences, both of an adolescent and of her friends. Using seven waves of data from adolescent school-grade friendship networks, I examine the effects of school suspension on (1) discontinuity in friendship selection and (2) change in the prosocial or antisocial behavioral composition of friendship networks. I then assess the extent to which the effect of suspension on network composition is due to discontinuity in friendship ties. In support of labeling theory, preliminary results suggest that suspension greatly reduces the likelihood that a student will no longer be nominated as a close friend by the peers who nominated her prior to her suspension.

Author

• Wade C. Jacobsen, Pennsylvania State University