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Schedule:
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Pacific D/L (Hyatt Regency San Francisco)
* noted as presenting author
Popularity, a salient aspect of youth’s social experiences (Rubin et al., 2006), has traditionally been assessed through a peer-perceived method that computes the difference between the number of least- and most-popular peer nominations (Kornbluh et al., 2016). One drawback of this method is that it neglects the complexity of adolescents’ social network by omitting to consider who youth are friends with and how popular these friends are. This study aims at refining the assessment of popularity so that the well-known influence of friends’ popularity on youth’s own popularity is considered (Dijsktra et al., 2010). We thus developed a network-based assessment, which we compare to the traditional method by measuring their predictive relation with self-esteem. In fact, popularity and self-esteem are known to correlate positively in adolescence (Litwack et al., 2012), and we hypothesize that the network-based popularity will be a stronger predictor of self-esteem than the traditional method, over one year.
METHOD: Participants are 470 students (54% girls, m = 13 y/o) in their first years attending a Belgian secondary school. Peer-perceived popularity was assessed by the difference between the number of least- and most-popular peer nominations. Network-based popularity was computed in three steps: (1) Identifying a friendship network for each participant, based on reciprocated like-most nominations using UCINET 6. (2) Assigning a peer-perceived popularity score to each member of the network. (3) Adjusting each participant’s peer-perceived score by adding the scores of all of their friends. Self-esteem was measured with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (1965).
RESULTS: Multiple linear regression models conducted in Mplus 8.0 showed that both methods were equivalent in predicting self-esteem over time, controlling for age, gender and prior self-esteem (both r2 = .24), and were highly correlated (r = .90). Unexpectedly, popularity assessed using both methods predicted a drop in self-esteem (ßs ˃ –.11, ps < .05).
DISCUSSION: Including friends’ popularity in the assessment of youth popularity doesn’t appear to add value to the traditional method. Post-hoc analysis revealed that friends’ popularity was positively related to self-esteem. This suggests that friends’ popularity is already captured by youth’s assessment of their peers’ popularity using the traditional method. Adolescents appear to be considering whom their peers are friends with and how popular these friends are. Our results suggest that the positive link between self-esteem and popularity found in past studies may not hold in all contexts and needs further investigation. This study adds to the prevention literature by highlighting the inherent network component of peer-report popularity assessment.
METHOD: Participants are 470 students (54% girls, m = 13 y/o) in their first years attending a Belgian secondary school. Peer-perceived popularity was assessed by the difference between the number of least- and most-popular peer nominations. Network-based popularity was computed in three steps: (1) Identifying a friendship network for each participant, based on reciprocated like-most nominations using UCINET 6. (2) Assigning a peer-perceived popularity score to each member of the network. (3) Adjusting each participant’s peer-perceived score by adding the scores of all of their friends. Self-esteem was measured with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (1965).
RESULTS: Multiple linear regression models conducted in Mplus 8.0 showed that both methods were equivalent in predicting self-esteem over time, controlling for age, gender and prior self-esteem (both r2 = .24), and were highly correlated (r = .90). Unexpectedly, popularity assessed using both methods predicted a drop in self-esteem (ßs ˃ –.11, ps < .05).
DISCUSSION: Including friends’ popularity in the assessment of youth popularity doesn’t appear to add value to the traditional method. Post-hoc analysis revealed that friends’ popularity was positively related to self-esteem. This suggests that friends’ popularity is already captured by youth’s assessment of their peers’ popularity using the traditional method. Adolescents appear to be considering whom their peers are friends with and how popular these friends are. Our results suggest that the positive link between self-esteem and popularity found in past studies may not hold in all contexts and needs further investigation. This study adds to the prevention literature by highlighting the inherent network component of peer-report popularity assessment.