Do peers matter? A review of peer and/or friends’ influence on physical activity among American adolescents

Abstract

Publication information Journal of Adolescence, 35 (4): 941-958Publisher Elsevier Item record/more information http://hdl.handle.net/10197/5155 Publisher's statementThis is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Adolescence. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. AbstractThis systematic review investigated the relationship between peer and/or friend variables and physical activity among adolescents by synthesising cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental research conducted in the US. Seven electronic databases were searched to identify related articles published within the last 10 years and the articles reviewed included adolescents between 10 and 18 years. Studies reporting a measure of physical activity for adolescents and at least one potential peer and/or friend variable were included. Research demonstrated that peers and friends have an important role to play in the physical activity behavior of adolescents. Six processes were identified through which peers and/or friends may have an influence on physical activity including: peer and/or friend support, presence of peers and friends during physical activity, peer norms, friendship sport quality and acceptance, peer crowd affiliation, and peer victimization. The theoretical significance of these results is assessed and the development of peer-related physical activity programmes for adolescents is discussed.

Effect of a school-based nutrition education program on adolescents’ nutrition-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviour in rural areas of China

“…Additionally, peer support is especially vital and influential to adolescents, as they spend increased time with peers, enhancing the potential for the norms and behaviours of peers to influence them [31,32]. While it is true that peers influence each other across the whole life span, the effects of peer influence, however, are stronger during adolescence than other stages of life [33,34]. Moreover, we gave the students adequate time to prepare before the peer support activity to establish their peer connections; enough autonomy and necessary guidance during the peer support activity to deepen the peer relations; and ongoing encouragement after the peer support activity to maintain peer bonds.…”

Longitudinal associations of parental and peer influences with physical activity during adolescence: findings from the COMPASS study

“…It is unclear whether having more physically active peers may have influenced adolescents' PA by increasing their motivation to be physically active, by promoting PA norms among peers or by providing companions for PA, or whether other mechanisms were involved. 29,38 Future studies should also examine factors that influence adolescents to form or dissolve friendships with physically active peers. Also, specific characteristics of the PA friendship network should be explored, such as composition and type of activities in which active peers participate, both of which are associated with changes in adolescent PA over time.…”

“…Therefore, longitudinal studies are needed to examine the temporal associations of parental encouragement and instrumental support with adolescent PA. 27,28 In terms of peer influences, previous studies suggest that a youth's friendship network could have a powerful influence on their PA levels by providing various forms of support, such as positive communication, co-participation and role modelling. 12,29 However, a prerequisite is the presence of friends who are physically active. It is, therefore, important to understand the influences of the number of physically active peers on PA participation.…”

Stratified Multilevel Logistic Regression Modeling for Risk Factors of Adolescent Obesity in Tennessee

“…Parallel to tobacco use, physical activity and related motivations are important for crowd association and significantly influenced by people around you (13), which provides basis this item as a class level variable.…”

“…This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited Additionally, scientists support that the co-occurrence of multiple risk behaviors increases with adolescent age (12); and that relationships between various health risk behaviors exist (13).…”