Emotional maladjustment may be more severe among overweight/obese girls whose ethnic group BMI norm is furthest away from overweight/obesity status. Implications for obesity work with ethnically diverse adolescents were discussed.
As children approach early adolescence, the risk of peer victimization often increases. Many children experience some form of peer victimization during this time, but children who experience chronic victimization may be particularly vulnerable to adjustment difficulties. Thus, identifying risk and protective factors associated with chronic victimization continues to be an important area of research. This study examined the effect of change in the victimization of friends on change in children's own victimization, taking into account the ethnic group representation of children in their classes. Over 3,000 6 th grade students (52% female; M = 11.33 years) were drawn from 19 middle schools varying in ethnic composition. Friendships were distinguished by typereciprocal, desired, and undesired-and a novel methodology for measuring ethnic group representation at the individual level was employed. Multilevel modeling indicated that change in friends' victimization from fall to spring of 6 th grade had a differential impact on children's own victimization by friendship type and that the benefits and consequences of change in friends' victimization were especially pronounced for children in the numerical ethnic majority. The findings underscore the role of friendship choices in peer victimization, even if those choices are not reciprocated, and highlight the unique social risks associated with being in the numerical ethnic majority.
In the present research, the influence of racial diversity among classmates and friends on changes in racial self-identification among multiracial youth was examined (n = 5,209; Mage = 10.56 years at the beginning of sixth grade). A novel individual-level measure of diversity among classmates based on participants’ course schedules was utilized. The findings revealed that although there was some fluidity in multiracial identification at the beginning of middle school, changes in multiracial identification were more evident later in middle school. In addition, although diversity among classmates and friends both increased the likelihood of multiracial identification in the beginning of middle school, only diversity among friends mattered later in middle school, when fluidity in multiracial identification was at its peak.
Social network analysis was used to examine the role of having a mutual biracial friend on cross‐race friendship nominations among monoracial sixth‐grade students (Mage = 10.56 years) in two racially diverse middle schools (n = 385; n = 351). Monoracial youth were most likely to choose same‐race peers as friends but more likely to choose biracial than different‐race peers as friends, suggesting that racial homophily may operate in an incremental way to influence friendships. Monoracial different‐race youth were also more likely to be friends if they had a mutual biracial friend. The findings shed light on the unique role that biracial youth play in diverse friendship networks. Implications for including biracial youth in studies of cross‐race friendship are discussed.
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