Friendships of Indonesian Children: Adjustment of Children Who Differ in Friendship Presence and Similarity Between Mutual Friends

Two aspects of the friendships of 960 Indonesian 10‐year‐old children were assessed. First, the characteristics of children with and without mutual friends were compared. Children without friends were more aggressive, withdrawn, and lower in academic achievement and social preference than those with friends. Second, similarities between children and their friends were assessed by comparing 132 target children with their friend and non‐friend classmates. Children were more similar to their friends than to non‐friends in social preference, achievement, peer and teacher rated antisocial behavior, and peer and teacher rated social withdrawal. The similarities of the friendships of Indonesian children to those of Western children with respect to these two features provide evidence of construct equivalence of friendships across cultures.     

With a Little Help from Your Friends: The Importance of High‐quality Friendships on Early Adolescent Adjustment

The unique contributions of peer acceptance, friendship, and victimization to adjustment were examined. How these relational systems moderate the influence of one another to influence adjustment was also investigated. Friendship quality, a unique aspect of friendship, was expected to be especially important for adjustment when other relational systems were poor. A total of 238 fifth to eighth graders (boys = 109) participated in the survey‐style paradigm. Youth participants completed measures assessing their friendships and peer relationships. Teachers provided assessments of adjustment. Adolescents who had lower levels of peer acceptance, number of friends, and friendship quality had greater teacher‐reported maladjustment. Friendship quality was also an important buffer against adjustment problems when peer acceptance and number of friends were low. The outcomes of this article suggest that an approach that includes examining the quality of adolescents' friendships, peer interactions, and interactive models of relationship dimensions are informative for understanding adolescents' general adjustment.     

Associations between sleep consolidation in infancy and peer relationships in middle childhood

Sleep plays an important role in many aspects of children's development. Research on children's sleep and their peer relationships has begun to emerge in the last years. However, these studies are mostly cross‐sectional. The current study aimed to investigate the associations between infant sleep and peer relationships in middle childhood. The sample comprised 72 children. Sleep was measured at 1 year using a sleep diary completed by mothers. In the second and third grades of elementary school (7 and 8 years of age), mothers and fathers reported on their children's functioning with peers. When they were in third grade, children were interviewed regarding their friendship quality with a best friend. Results revealed negative associations between children's sleep consolidation (i.e., ratio of nighttime sleep) and parent‐reported peer problems, and positive associations between sleep consolidation and perceived friendship quality. These findings suggest that well‐regulated sleep in infancy may help children develop the skills necessary for later appropriate social functioning in peer contexts.     

Operationalizing the Construct of Friendship among Children: A Psychometric Comparison of Sociometric-Based Definitional Methodologies

Peer relations researchers generally agree that friendship involves a close, mutual, dyadic relationship. However, the lack of consensus on how to operationalize this construct has limited our understanding of the role of friendship in social adjustment. The present study directly compared the psychometric properties (i.e., number of friendships identified, concordances, and stability) of the five major different definitions of friendship used in the literature. Fourth- and fifth-grade students (N = 90) completed a battery of sociometric measures at two different times separated by eight weeks. Friendship dyads were then identified using the following definitional criteria: (1) mutual positive nominations; (2) mutal high ratings (i.e., 4 or 5 on a five-point Likert-type scale); (3) one positive nomination reciprocated by a rating of 5; (4) one positive nomination and mutual high ratings; and (5) one positive nomination and mutual ratings averaging at least 4. Frequency and concordance analyses indicated differences across the five definitions. In addition, the friendships identified by each of the five definitions were similarly moderate in their stability. Explanations for, and the possible implications of, these differences are discussed.     

A Behaviour-Based Peer-Nomination Measure of Social Withdrawal in Children

Research on social withdrawal has been impeded by problems in the definition of the construct and in its measurement. The purpose of this study was to develop a behaviourally-based peer-nomination measure useful in measuring two types of withdrawal: Inhibited/Wary and Self-Conscious/Anxious. In Study 1, we report the development of the measure. We examined whether this two-factor structure would be supported by data obtained from multiple informants. Data were collected from children in grades 3, 5, and 7, and their peers and teachers. Intercorrelations of peer-, teacher-, and self-reports of the Behaviour-Based Peer-Nomination Measures of social withdrawal supported the validity of the Inhibited/Wary dimension; teacher-peer agreement also provided support for the validity of the Self-Conscious/Anxious dimension. In Study2, the Behaviour-Based Peer-Nomination Measure of Social Withdrawal was cross-validated against observed play behaviour with 120 boys and girls. Results revealed some concordances between observational and peer-nomination data.     

Relating Individual Control, Social Understanding, and Gender to Child–Friend Interaction: A Relationships Perspective

According to a relationships perspective, it is critical to consider how the individual behaviors and characteristics of both partners shape their social interaction. Adopting a relationships approach to the investigation of children's friendships, we examined how preschool children's and their friends’ controlling behaviors, social understanding, and gender were related to their dyadic interaction. Child–friend dyads (n = 49) were videotaped in two laboratory play sessions (free play and sharing task), and child interviews assessed understanding of emotions and false beliefs. Both children's indirect control was associated with coordinated play during the free play session, and both children's direct control was associated with conflict during the sharing task. Moreover, dyadic interaction varied as a function of study children's social understanding, friends’ social understanding, and play session. An interaction between gender composition and play session also emerged for dyadic conflict. Multiple regression analyses suggested that study children's controlling behaviors accounted for associations between dyadic interaction and more ‘distal’ individual factors (i.e., social understanding, gender). The findings underscore the need to examine how both children's individual competencies are related to the quality of their dyadic interaction and illuminate how the associations between individual factors and dyadic interaction are moderated by the interactive context.     

College Students' Revenge Goals Across Friend,Romantic Partner,and Roommate Contexts: The Role of Interpretations and Emotions

Residential college environments provide young people with distinctive relationship opportunities and challenges. A major purpose of the present study was to learn whether college students respond differently to conflict‐of‐interest vignettes in three different relationship contexts. Students were more likely to make negative interpretations about their romantic partner's behavior than they did about their friend's or roommate's behavior. They were also more likely to feel angry and hurt and to endorse hostile goals and strategies with romantic partners. A second major purpose was to learn about the types of interpretations and emotions associated with revenge goals in conflict‐of‐interest situations. Results indicated that interpreting the other person's actions as disrespectful and as rejecting was related to revenge goals and also predicted to revenge goals beyond the contributions of anger and hurt feelings.     

Friendship,Negative Peer Experiences,and Daily Positive and Negative Mood

We examined the effect of negative peer experiences (NPEs; peer victimization and exclusion) on mood (depressed, angry, positive). Seventy‐seven (43 female) fifth graders from elementary schools located in a small town in the Midwest completed a friendship quality measure, in addition to daily reports (seven school days) of mood and peer experiences. Multilevel modeling showed that children who had NPEs in which no one intervened had more negative and less positive mood. For negative mood, this result was attenuated if the child had a friend who was generally helpful. The results demonstrate the positive role of bystanders during NPEs and highlight the protective role of high‐quality friendships.     

Dyadic Analyses of Preschool‐aged Children's Friendships: Convergence and Differences between Friendship Classifications from Peer Sociometric Data and Teacher's Reports

Peer sociometrics and teachers' friendship reports were compared in 2179 preschool dyads. One hundred twenty of 306 reciprocated friend dyads from peer sociometric data were also identified as good friends by their classroom teachers, and 301 of 600 of non‐reciprocated dyads in peer data were named as friends by one or both classroom teachers (overall kappa = .16). Friendship classifications from both peer and teacher data had significant relations with variables relevant to peer interactions, social skills, peer acceptance, and teacher‐rated scales (six of seven tests significant for peer data; five of eight significant for teacher data). Multilevel analyses indicated that friendship status effects were not qualified by classroom‐level differences. Findings suggest that sociometric tasks can identify preschoolers' peer friendships and that the range of correlates may be broader in peer‐choice data than in teachers' friendship evaluations.     

The Communication of Differential Relationships in Preschool Children: Preference and Social Theme

We examined the conversations of 14 preschool children to explore differences in communication between friends and nonfriends in a well-established group. Children's social preferences were identified by analysing relative utterance frequencies which revealed a network structure of 4 cliques. We then examined whether the integration (inclusion/exclusion) and social theme (person/action) content of children's utterances, and the responses (accept/oppose) to these utterances, discriminated relationships in the social network. Our main findings were 1) Exclusive utterances were more likely to occur between nonfriends and to be opposed. Inclusive utterances were more likely to occur between friends and to be accepted. 2) Person and action themes were used differentially. In exclusion statements, nonfriends were more likely to be personally rejected whereas friends were more likely to have their actions rejected. In inclusion statements, personal references were more likely to be accepted between friends whereas references to a peer's actions tended to be accepted by both friends and nonfriends. We concluded that children adapted the integration and social theme content of their utterances to relationship context in order to establish more intimate interactions between friends and more distant interactions between nonfriends.     

The Effects of Participation Rate on the Internal Reliability of Peer Nomination Measures

Although low participation rates have historically been considered problematic in peer nomination research, some researchers have recently argued that small proportions of participants can, in fact, provide adequate sociometric data. The current study used a classical measurement perspective to investigate the internal reliability (Cronbach's α) of peer nomination measures of acceptance, popularity, friendship, prosocial behavior, and overt aggression. Data from 642 participants attending 10 schools were resampled at different participation rates ranging from 5 percent to 100 percent of the original samples. Results indicated that (1) the association between participation rate and Cronbach's α was curvilinear across schools and variables; (2) collecting more data for a given variable (by using unlimited vs. limited nominations, or two vs. one items) was significantly related to higher internal reliability; and (3) certain variables (overt aggression, popularity) were more reliable than others (acceptance, friendship). Implications for future research were discussed.     

A Social Relations Analysis of Children's Trust in Their Peers across the Early Years of School

Two hundred and five (103 female and 102 male) children enrolled in school years 1 and 2 in the UK (mean age 6 years 1 month at Time 1) were tested twice over a 1‐year period. The children reported the promise keeping and secret keeping behaviours of classmates (all peers and same‐gender peers) and provided friendship nominations (Time 2 only). Round robin social relations analyses for all peers and same‐gender peers revealed: (1) perceiver variance, demonstrating consistent individual differences in trust beliefs in peers; (2) target variance, demonstrating consistent individual differences in eliciting trust from peers; and, (3) dyadic reciprocity, demonstrating reciprocal trust between individuals. Replicability across measures, stability, and cross‐measure stability of these effects were found for all peers only. As hypothesized, the perceiver and target effects of trust were associated with the number of friendships. The findings support the conclusion that young children demonstrate multiple components of trust in dyadic relationships, which are associated with their social relationships.     

Grandparents Raising Children With and Without a Developmental Disability

Abstract

This study compared two groups of grandparents, those who were raising grandchildren with a developmental disability, and those raising grandchildren without a developmental disability. Service use, depressive symptoms among grandparents and the impact of welfare reform are considered among other variables. Recommendations are made for the various service systems which impact upon these families. Issues for future research are also identified.     

Patterns of Bully/Victim Problems in Mixed Race Groups of Children

This study investigated the extent of bullying within and between British Asian and White girls and boys (n = 156) and some of the reasons why it occurs. There was no significant difference in the percentage of peers that nominated Asian and White children as either bullies or victims. Contrary to our prediction (derived from Tajfel's social judgement theory), both Asian children and White children were significantly more likely to be named as bullies of same-race classmates than to be named as bullies of other-race classmates. Again contrary to our prediction, for Asian boys and White boys there were no significant correlations between general racial preferences/attitudes on the one hand, and the extent to which they were named by classmates as bullies of other-race children on the other hand. In order to investigate the types of bullying directed at own-race and other-race pupils, a subset of the sample of children (n = 60) were also asked about the specific types of bullying they had experienced, and who was responsible. Some significant racial differences emerged, most notably that proportionally more Asian children than White children reported that they had been teased about their colour or race by children of the other-race, and the opposite was the case for non-racial types of teasing. The implications of these results for children's social development, and for school's attempts to remove bully/victim problems, are discussed. One recommendation was that teasing, and especially racial teasing by racial majority pupils, should be a focus for intervention.     

Race and Sex as Factors in Children's Sociometric Ratings and Friendship Choices

This research provides a comprehensive analysis of the association of race and sex to children's peer relationships by assessing: a) the association of both race and sex; b) multiple measures of peer relationships (sociometric ratings and friendships); and c) an entire elementary school (Grades 1 to 6) with nearly an even number of African-American to European-American children in each class. Regardless of age, race, or sex, and for both relationship measures, children showed a greater bias favoring same-sex peers than same-race peers. Although older African-American children had more same-race than cross-race mutual friends, African-American children were more accepting of European-American children than the reverse. Despite some same-race preferences, cross-race evaluations were generally quite positive on both measures. The differential impact of sex and race as considerations for peer evaluations is discussed.     

Social Competence in Preschool Children: Replication of Results and Clarification of a Hierarchical Measurement Model

This study tested assumptions and conclusions reached in an earlier confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) study of the social competence (SC) construct for preschool children. Two samples (total N = 408; a new Portuguese sample and one from US samples that had participated in the original study) contributed data. Seven SC indicators were tested for mean differences across age, sex, and sample. Significant sex differences were found for peer acceptance (favoring girls) and for initiating affectively neutral interactions (boys had higher rates), and the sex by sample interaction also was significant for initiating interactions (i.e., effect significant only in the Portuguese sample). In CFAs, the hypothesized structure of SC fits the data and was invariant across sample and age within sample in both measurement and structural tests. The model was invariant at the measurement level for sex within sample tests, but not at the structural level. The results replicate and extend understandings of SC reported in the original study.     

Family, Neighborhood, and Peer Characteristics as Predictors of Child Adjustment: A Longitudinal Analysis of Additive and Mediation Models

The purpose of this study was to test direct, additive, and mediation models involving family, neighborhood, and peer factors in relation to emerging antisocial behavior and social skills. Neighborhood danger, maternal depressive symptoms, and supportive parenting were assessed in early childhood. Peer group acceptance was measured in middle childhood, and data on antisocial behavior and social skills were collected when boys were 11 and 12 years old. Results were consistent with an additive effects model of child antisocial behavior. In contrast, peer relationships were stronger predictors of social skills than were family factors. Support for mediation was found in models involving neighborhood danger and supportive parenting. However, only peer group acceptance predicted change in antisocial and prosocial behavior. Implications for family and peer relations as socialization contexts are discussed.     

Social Networks Derived from Affiliations and Friendships, Multi-informant and Self-reports: Stability, Concordance, Placement of Aggressive and Unpopular Children, and Centrality

This study compares three variations in how researchers construct middle childhood social networks: (1) with friendships or affiliations as a relational tie; (2) with children providing self reports of relationships, or in addition, multi-informant reports of relationships in which they are not involved; and (3) whether network computation is correlational or distance-based . The sample was 357 fourth- and fifth-grade students in 17 classrooms. The strongest differences were between self-reported friendship and affiliative networks. Results showed that compared with affiliations, friendship networks had smaller groups, more isolates, and lower fall-to-spring stability. Agreement in social placement between friendship and affiliative networks was generally average, but poor for unpopular and aggressive children. Multi-informant affiliative networks were most robust in their positioning of aggressive children. Multi-informant centrality was uniquely uncorrelated with aggression. Network computation differences were not substantial. Discussion focuses on recommendations for research and the educational promise of network technology.     

Using a “child's‐eye view” of social success to understand the importance of school readiness at the transition to formal schooling

Recent research into school readiness has highlighted the importance of not only children's cognitive and socio‐emotional skills, but also the degree to which they have family support in the home. The current study examines the association between social success upon school entry and teacher‐ratings of school readiness as assessed by the Brief Early Skills and Support Index (BESSI), controlling for language ability. Importantly, social success was assessed using a “child's‐eye view” with peer‐reported assessments of both social preference and reciprocated friendships. A total of 244 children (131 boys, M_age = 61 months, SD = 4.78 months) in their first year of formal schooling participated. Child school readiness was found to be important for social preference, with the association being more marked for boys versus girls. Family support was the only independent predictor of children's reciprocated friendships. The use of the BESSI, with its broad scope compared to other measures of school readiness, highlights the importance of focusing both on a child's cognitive and socio‐emotional skills at school entry and their family support when exploring the association of school readiness to children's social success at the transition to formal schooling.     

Peer relationships during late childhood in internationally adopted and institutionalized children

The aim of this study was to analyse the interpersonal relationships in the school context of children living in different care settings (adoptive families, residential care centres, birth families). Participants were 76 children between eight and fourteen years of age (M = 10.78, SD = 1.38), belonging to one of three groups: international adoptees, children living in residential care in Spanish institutions, and a comparison sample of Spanish children living with their birth families with no connection with child protection. Sociometric information was collected in the classroom of each child during school hours. Internationally adopted children from Russia showed considerable difficulties in their relationships with peers; they were more likely to be rejected and their peers described them as less prosocial and somewhat more aggressive. With a better sociometric position than the adoptees, children in residential care were rated by their peers as more aggressive and less prosocial than the normative population. Coordination and integrated work between the family, protection centres, schools, and other social services should be a strategic priority in the promotion of healthy social development in these groups of children.