Associations between cross‐racial friendships and children’s social and academic adjustment in racially diverse classrooms

Abstract

This study examined bidirectional associations between cross‐racial friendships and children's social and academic adjustment. Participants were 583 elementary school‐age children in western Canada, or the midwestern United States (4–10 years; 279 girls; 143 Asian, 88 Black, 65 Hispanic or Latinx, 171 White, 116 mixed). Children's adjustment (social preference, academic enablers, academic performance) and friendship nominations (reciprocated, received, given) were measured in fall and spring over one school year from 2017 to 2018, or from 2018 to 2019. Regarding reciprocated nominations, fall adjustment positively predicted spring reciprocated cross‐racial friendships, but not vice‐versa. For received nominations, academic enablers and received cross‐racial friendship nominations were positively and bidirectionally related to one another. Fall same‐racial friendship nominations positively predicted spring academic performance and social preference. Effect sizes were small.

Academic achievement, same- and cross-ethnic positive peer regard among Asian American and Latinx adolescents.

“…There are also methodological challenges that may complicate findings in this area of research. With a few exceptions (Qi et al, 2022), there has been a paucity of longitudinal findings that could shed light on the temporal ordering of the relations. Moreover, investigators have tended to rely on single-index assessments of social adjustment, which did not fully capture positive peer regard as a multifaceted construct.…”

“…Kawabata and Crick (2015) reported a positive concurrent association between cross-ethnic friendship and academic engagement from a racially diverse sample of elementary students. Longitudinal studies have suggested possible bidirectional relationships between friendships in multiethnic schools and academic outcomes, though some controversy may exist (Lewis et al, 2018; Qi et al, 2022; Witkow & Fuligni, 2010). Given the adaptive correlates of having cross-ethnic friends (e.g., social-cognitive skills and cooperative learning skills; Lease & Blake, 2005; Rucinski et al, 2021), cross-ethnic friendship has been proposed to play a more salient role in academic functioning above and beyond friendship with same-ethnic peers (Kawabata & Crick, 2015).…”

“…Still, our results did not yield any evidence for prospective associations between positive peer regard and academic achievement among Asian American or Latinx students. Moreover, findings from prior short-term longitudinal studies have also produced inconclusive results (Lewis et al, 2018;Qi et al, 2022). Longer-term designs may be necessary for detecting changes in academic adjustment (Schwartz et al, 2005).…”

Evaluating the factor structure and measurement invariance of the Academic Competence Evaluation Scales–Short Form.

“…Due to its strong psychometric properties, the ACES-SF has also been used in a recent study (Monopoli et al, 2023) to evaluate convergent and discriminant validity for the Social Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ; developed by Crick & Grotpeter, 1996), a measure of peer victimization. In addition to psychometric studies, the Academic Enablers scale of the ACES-SF has been utilized in applied research with both typically developing student populations as well as students at risk for psychopathology (e.g., Mikami et al, 2022; Qi et al, 2022).…”