Obesity-related behaviors in adolescent friendship networks
Section snippets
Social networks and health behaviors
Measuring the complex patterns of adolescents’ friendship ties can serve to highlight how network structure and behaviors are interdependent. Theories of social influence identify both direct (e.g. imitation) and indirect (e.g. internalization of group norms) mechanisms of interpersonal influence, which arise through social interaction. Social ties can also be influential as conduits of resources, information and social support, and positions or roles within these social-structural contexts can
Respondents
Male and female students from two independent middle schools in a major Australian city were invited to take part in the study. Participants from School 1 were in year 8, and predominantly 13 years old (76%). Participants from School 2 were in year 8 (82% were 13 years old) and year 9 (87% were 14 years old). Each school year level was defined as a separate peer network to explore similarities and differences within and across age groups and school contexts. Response rates within each of these
Structural effects
The final model parameter estimates and standard errors for the structural effects in each of the six friendship networks (three male, three female) are presented in Table 4, with significant parameters denoted by an asterisk (*).
Endogenous effects were found to explain the structure of the observed networks, and thus need to be accounted for when testing the hypotheses. Across all friendship networks, there were significant reciprocity effects, meaning friendship ties tended to be reciprocated
Discussion
Adolescent school friends were found to be similar on some obesity-related behaviors, particularly leisure activities. Organized physical activity was an important factor in adolescent friendships in two of the three networks, with male and female friends tending to be alike in the extent that they participated in activities such as sports and training. Female friends in all three networks were found to be similar on sedentary screen-based activities, including video/computer gaming and
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