Third-grade children (N = 404) and their mothers completed questionnaires and participated in interviews designed to identify children's friendships across the multiple contexts of their lives and to determine the strength of parent-to-parent relationships for these friendships (social network closure). Hierarchical linear modeling procedures were used to evaluate links between friendship context and strength of closure relationships. Closure relationships were stronger when friendships were maintained within the contexts of neighborhood, church, extracurricular activities, relatives-as-friends, and family friends, and when friendships were maintained across multiple social contexts. Lower socioeconomic status mothers were particularly likely to report higher levels of closure within the contexts of neighborhood and relatives-as-friends. KEY WORDS: children, closure, context, friendships, HLM, social networks Article: Developmental research has long recognized the importance of both parents (Parke & Buriel,1998) and peers (Bukowski, Newcomb, & Hartup, 1996; Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 1998) as influences on children's development and well-being. Yet researchers have traditionally failed to recognize the complexity with which such influences may be intertwined, as well as nested within the multiple contexts of children's lives. Parents play an active role in monitoring and guiding their children's relationships with peers both directly and indirectly, by way of the social connections they maintain with other parents and adults who have contact with their children (Ladd, 1992). The extent of this involvement is dependent in part on the social contexts (e.g., school, neighborhood, child care setting) in which children maintain friendships, as well as the extent and types of interactions parents have with the parents of their children's friends.
We examined the extent to which identifications of children’s friends across multiple contexts by both children and their mothers might differ from identifications made by both individuals working in concert as well as the sources of such differences. Interviews were conducted with 347 fifth-grade children and their mothers. A subset of 20 dyads also participated in qualitative interviews. Children and mothers created lists of children’s friends working separately and together. Individual completion and joint completion lists were compared to identify discrepancies. Qualitative participants reflected on sources of discrepancies. Discrepancies were predicted by ethnicity, child social problems, cross-gender and cross-ethnicity friendship status, and friendship context. Explanations for discrepancies suggested that discrepancies reflected both genuine differences in perspective and reporting error.
Children (N = 341) and their mothers participated in interviews when children were in fourth and fifth grades. Mothers and children worked together to identify children's friends across various contexts of their lives. Children rated the companionship of each friendship and friendships were coded as either short term or long term. Higher levels of companionship were associated with increased odds of a friendship being long term, as was a friendship being maintained within the contexts of neighborhood, family friend, relative-as-friend, and efforts of parents. A friendship being maintained in more contexts was associated with increased odds of the friendship being long term. The findings are discussed in terms of implications for the understanding and support of children's friendships.
This chapter provides institutional researchers a foundation to understand workforce data and how they can be accessed and used within an institutional research operating culture. Specific wage methodologies, earnings reporting, and future directions for using wage data are provided.
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