Social background and friendship patterns among middle-school students
Type de matériel :
57
Several works have shown that the representations of friendship and the structure of friendship networks vary according to the socio-professional background of French adults. However, such a comparison has yet to be drawn for children and adolescents. Therefore, the present article aims to compare friendship patterns among middle-school students of different socio-professional backgrounds, based on a research study conducted in four French middle schools with high levels of social diversity. It draws on the analysis of the friendship networks of 820 students over a eighteen-month period, based on TERGM (Temporal Exponential Random-Graph Model) statistical models. Results show that the degree of transitivity and residential homophily does not vary according to the students’ background. However, once the main structural properties of the networks are accounted for, homophily in musical tastes and declared personality traits does appear stronger among students from more privileged backgrounds. These findings highlight the joint impact of the school context and of extracurricular socialization in shaping students’ sociability.
Réseaux sociaux