The Embeddedness of Adolescent Friendship Nominations: The Formation of Social Capital in Emergent Network Structures

Abstract

Although research on social embeddedness and social capital con-firms the value of friendship networks, little has been written about how social relations form and are structured by social institutions. Using data from the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement study and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the authors show that the odds of a new friendship nomination were 1.77 times greater within clusters of high school students taking courses together than between them. The estimated effect cannot be attributed to exposure to peers in similar grade levels, indirect friendship links, or pair-level course overlap, and the finding is robust to alternative model specifications. The authors also show how tendencies associated with status hierarchy inhering in triadic friendship nominations are neutralized within the clusters. These results have implications for the production and distribution of social capital within social systems such as schools, giving the clusters social salience as “local positions.”

Ethnic segregation of friendship networks in school: Testing a rational-choice argument of differences in ethnic homophily between classroom- and grade-level networks

“…This situation clearly applies to classrooms, where students not only attend daily lessons together but are also exposed to the same obligations, have to tackle the same tasks (e.g., do the same homework), and share experiences related to class trips or other joint activities. Focal points also reduce the transaction costs of identifying potential friends, because they give students the relatively cost-free opportunity to explore the pool of potential friends (Frank et al, 2013). This also applies to classrooms in which students encounter each other regularly -irrespective of whether they prefer to do so (Smith et al, 2014: 44).…”

“…Friendships should also generally be formed more frequently within classrooms than within grades, because grade-level friendships are more costly than classroom-level friendships (Frank et al, 2013). Finally, as forming a grade-level friendship requires particularly strong individual preferences to compensate for the higher costs of acquiring and maintaining such a friendship, same-ethnic friendships should be relatively more frequent among grade-level friendships than among classroom-level friendships.…”

Making Friends in Violent Neighborhoods: Strategies among Elementary School Children

“…Because forming friends depends on the decisions that individuals make within structural constraints, researchers have adopted many analytical perspectives. They have focused on individual factors such as race, gender, and class (Eder and Hallinan 1978;Tuma and Hallinan 1979;Haselager et al 1998;Moody 2001;Vaquera and Kao 2008;Crosnoe, Frank, and Mueller 2008;Rude and Herda 2010 ), on dyadic factors such as homophily or reciprocity (Kandel 1978, Goodreau, Kitts, andMorris 2009), on structural factors such as balance and transitivity (Hallinan and Hutchins 1980;McFarland et al 2014;Rambaran et al 2015), and on contextual factors such as classroom size and group assignment (Hallinan 1976;Hallinan and Tuma 1978;Frank, Muller, and Mueller 2013;see Verbrugge 1977).…”

Why rely on friends instead of family? The role of exchanges and civic engagement in a rural sub-Saharan African context

“…Such ties that are developed through formal and informal civic engagement are often described as ‘bridging’ and therefore link those who would not typically connect with one another (Putnam 2000). Thus, such social groups or gatherings can decrease ‘the transaction costs of identifying potential friends’ (Frank, Muller & Mueller 2013: 241), and therefore potentially foster friendship ties.…”