In intense academic environments such as in South Korea, students experience extreme levels of academic stress. This stress peaks as students prepare for the college entrance exam in the final year of high school. Stress is associated with a host of negative outcomes, and academic stress is the leading cause of suicidal ideation among youth in South Korea. Research suggests that in high-stress contexts such as this, social capital can improve academic success and mental health, while reducing risky or deviant behaviors. However, this research has predominantly focused on Western contexts. Because of the unique intensity of educational pursuits and intense investment in education by parents, South Korea provides a compelling case for research on the effects of family and school social capital on youth academic stress. Using data from the Korea Youth Panel Survey (N = 2753), we find that particular components of family and school social capital can both reduce and exacerbate academic stress. While measures of closeness and connection to parents reduced academic stress, school social capital had a limited impact on academic stress. Furthermore, there may be a limit to the effectiveness of social capital to help with academic stress before it becomes too much of a good thing.
Research suggests that juvenile delinquency has a number of deleterious effects on adolescents’ lives. A promising way to discourage delinquent behavior is by increasing social capital, which involves social connections adolescents have to other actors and pro-social norms that flow through these networks. The primary source of social capital is one’s family members, but no studies to date have focused directly on the effects of family social capital on delinquent behavior in the United Kingdom (U.K.). We use data from the U.K. Millennium Cohort Study (MCS, 2015–2016; n = 11,352) to assess different sources of family social capital among youth. The results of negative binomial regression models indicate that certain types of family social capital, including parental supervision, not fighting with parents, and talking to parents when youth are worried, are associated with less delinquent behavior, even after adjusting for covariates such as family structure, household income, and peer behaviors. The results add to the empirical foundation that supports family social capital’s attenuating effects on youth misbehaviors and increases confidence in the utility of social capital to serve as a generally applicable theory of youth development and behaviors.
A robust literature connects children’s and adolescents’ social capital to a range of desirable outcomes, including increased academic achievement and decreased delinquency. We extend this research by extending possible associations with child social capital to positive behaviors, measured here as prosocial behaviors. We examine data on 6th graders in Germany. We select the German context in part because one important source of child social capital, participation in religious congregations, is not as prevalent in modern Germany as in the US samples from which many social capital studies are derived. We use data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and measures of child social capital, including parent–child interactions, family activities, and religious participation, to predict prosocial behavior. Results indicate that social capital in the form of parent-child interactions in the home and child religiosity is associated weakly with greater prosocial behavior. These results suggest that adults can help children develop stronger prosocial norms by increasing interaction with their children and by exposing their children to network ties in religious settings, but also that social capital can be derived different ways in different contexts.
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