Dev
Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2012 Jul 1. Published in final edited form as: PMCID: PMC3134619 NIHMSID: NIHMS294155 Extracurricular activities are settings that are theorized to help adolescents maintain existing friendships and develop new friendships. The overarching goal of the current
investigation was to examine whether co-participating in school-based extracurricular activities supported adolescents’ school-based friendships. We utilized social network methods and data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine whether dyadic friendship ties were more likely to exist among activity co-participants while controlling for alternative friendship processes, namely dyadic homophily [e.g., demographic and behavioral similarities] and network-level
processes [e.g., triadic closure]. Results provide strong evidence that activities were associated with current friendships and promoted the formation of new friendships. These associations varied based on school level [i.e., middle versus high school] and activity type [i.e., sports, academic, arts]. Results of this study provide new insight into the complex relations between activities and friendship that can inform theories of their developmental outcomes.Abstract
Keywords: adolescence, extracurricular activities, social networks, friendships, homophily
According to Ecological theory [Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006], adolescents’ friendships are nested within multiple larger settings, such as schools. A question that is all too often overlooked is why do certain adolescents within these larger settings become friends but not others? The peer homophily literature emphasizes similarities between people as the primary factor promoting friendships [e.g., McPherson, Smith-Lovin, Cook, 2001; Hallinan & Williams, 1989; Hamm, 2000]. However, of the homophilous friendships that are possible only a small number ever form. Another mechanism that has received attention by developmentalists is extracurricular activities. Much of this research has focused on the positive outcomes of school-based extracurricular activities, including high school graduation and development of critical life skills [Mahoney, Vandell, Simpkins, & Zarrett, 2009]. Although scholars have theorized that activity-based friendships play a prominent role in producing these outcomes [e.g., Urberg, Degirmencioglu, & Tolson, 1998; Eccles & Barber, 1999], very little work has directly examined how activity settings promote friendships at the dyadic and network levels.
The overarching goal of the current investigation is to examine whether co-participating in a school-based extracurricular activity supported friendships among adolescents at the same school. To address this goal, we utilize social network analysis to answer developmental questions about adolescents’ extracurricular activities and friendships. We use the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health [Add Health] to examine whether friendships were more likely among activity co-participants while controlling for processes the psychology and sociology literatures have shown promote friendships, namely dyadic homophily [e.g., demographic and behavior similarities] and network-level processes [e.g., triadic closure]. In addition to this overarching goal, we examine whether the association between activity co-participation and friendship varied [a] between middle and high school, [b] based on the type of activity [i.e., sports, academic, arts], and [c] across time.
The Role of Extracurricular Activity Settings in Adolescents’ Friendships
Theory and empirical work suggest that extracurricular activity settings have three characteristics that promote friendships. First, Focus Theory posits that regular, sustained contact centered around an activity increases the likelihood that friendships will develop [Feld, 1981]. The consistency of extracurricular activities provides the basic environment for adolescents to spend time with each other. Second, extracurricular activities afford experiences that build relationships among co-participants, such as teamwork and emotion regulation [Larson, 2000]. These skills learned during activities can help adolescents maintain current friendships and develop new ones. Third, extracurricular activities tend to bring together adolescents with similar interests who are, hence, appealing to one another as friends [Fredricks et al., 2002; Loder & Hirsch, 2003; Wigfield, Eccles, Schiefele, Roeser, & Davis-Kean, 2006]. In fact, activity co-participation has been shown to promote friendships that are unlikely according to the peer homophily literature, such as cross-race and cross-age friendships [Dworkin et al., 2003; Hansen et al., 2003; Khmelkov & Hallinan, 1999].
Prior research has largely focused on the concurrent relation between activity participation and friendships [e.g., Darling, Caldwell, & Smith, 2005; Eccles & Barber, 1999]. However, it is likely that these concurrent associations are the result of two processes that unfold over time. Adolescents join an activity to spend time with friends they met before the activity [e.g., Loder & Hirsch, 2003]. At the same time, adolescents develop new friendships with peers they meet at an activity [Larson, Hansen, & Moneta, 2006]. In other words, activities are theorized as a setting to help maintain existing friendships and form new ones.
The Association between Activities and Friendships in Middle Schools and High Schools
There are key developmental reasons to expect a stronger positive association between activity co-participation and friendships for high school students than middle school students. Scholars theorize that youth’s organized activities, identity, and friendships are part of a synergistic system where the three influence one another over time [Eccles & Barber, 1999]. Research also suggests there are changes in these three components throughout development. For example, identity theories maintain that adolescents develop a more well-defined sense of self as they age [Kroger, 2007]. Parallel research suggests that adolescents become more specialized in their activity participation with age and that the activities they participate in correspond to their identity [e.g., Denault & Poulin, 2009b; Eccles & Barber, 1999; Mahoney et al., 2009]. In other words, older adolescents have a stronger sense of who they are and what they like to do after school than younger adolescents. We propose that these developmental changes have implications for the strength of the relation relations between activities and friendships. Specifically, we expect that activities and friendships will evidence a stronger positive relation for high school students than middle school students. This is likely because high school students may be more likely to select activities based on friendships and to develop new friendships based on co-participation compared to middle school students.
In addition to developmental differences, there are important structural differences between middle and high schools. The typically larger size of high schools is particularly germane to the questions at hand. Although larger schools often offer more activities, they have lower rates of activity participation, particularly in nonacademic activities [Crosnoe, Johnson, & Elder, 2004; Lay, 2007]. This suggests that students in larger schools may be more selective in the activities they pursue, which would produce greater similarity among participants. Moreover, extracurricular activities may serve a more important sorting function for adolescents in large schools by identifying other students with similar interests. As a result, we expected friendships and activities to be positively associated in all contexts, but more strongly associated in high school compared to middle school.
The Association between Activities and Friendships across Different Activity Types
Though there is theoretical and empirical evidence suggesting that the association between friendships and activity participation varies by activity type, to our knowledge, the relation has not been empirically tested. Three main types of school-based activities include sports, performing arts, and academic clubs [e.g., Eccles, & Barber, 1999]. Participation in these activities is associated with different “crowds” or peer group affiliations [Brown & Dietz, 2009]. Participants in activities associated with high social status, such as sports, may receive more gestures of friendship from non-participants than participants in art or academic activities [Coleman, 1996; Brown & Dietz, 2009; Eccles & Barber, 1999]. As a result, sport participants might display lower levels of friendships among co-participants because their higher status will provide them greater opportunities for friendships with non-participants. By contrast, participants in activities such as art and academic clubs that are associated with lower status crowds will be more likely to form friendships among themselves rather than across crowds. Thus, we expected the positive association between co-participation and friendship will be stronger for art and academic activities than sport activities.
Alternative Friendship Processes
Because friendship dyads are nested within larger friendship groups, assessing the contribution of activities to friendships requires disentangling it from normative friendship processes. To better understand this, we investigated the unique contribution of activity co-participation to friendships beyond the two primary contributors to friendship formation, namely dyadic homophily and network-level processes.
Homophily
One of the most important processes contributing to friendships is the preference for friends who are similar to oneself, or homophily. Activity co-participation is one example of homophily, though it is distinct in that it reflects physical co-presence in a particular setting. Other dimensions of homophily do not imply physical co-presence, but rather greater than expected similarity on characteristics and behavior. Friends tend to be more similar than non-friends in terms of their socio-demographic characteristics [e.g., gender, race, grade and SES; Brown & Larson, 2009] and behavior, including academic achievement [Kindermann, 2007], problem behaviors [e.g., Espelage, Holt, & Henkel, 2003], and physical health [e.g., Trogdon, Nonnemaker, & Pais, 2008].
Blau [1977] asserted that homophily on any behavior, such as activity participation, could be a spurious product of selection on other dimensions rather than a preference for co-participants as friends. For instance, selection on socio-economic status [SES] could produce activity homophily because friends tend to be the same SES and SES is positively related to activity participation [for a review, see Mahoney et al., 2009]. Statistically controlling for individual characteristics that are strongly related to both friendships and activity participation provides greater confidence that their association is not spurious.
Network processes
The structure of the friendship network facilitates additional friendships through endogenous network processes. A key feature of social networks is triadic closure, or the tendency for friends to share mutual friends. For instance, if Amy is friends with both Beth and Cathy, it is likely that Beth and Cathy will be friends. Triadic closure appears as early as preschool [Schaefer, Light, Hanish, Martin, & Fabes, 2010], and becomes stronger as children age [Hallinan & Felmlee, 1975]. Triadic closure can occur through transitivity, where current friendships provide exposure to new peers [Holland & Leinhardt, 1972]. For example, if Amy spends some time with Beth and some time with Cathy, the likelihood of Beth and Cathy meeting and becoming friends increases. Failing to consider triadic closure in such a situation would lead to the erroneous conclusion that the activity brought Beth and Cathy together instead of their mutual friendship with Amy. In general, failure to control for triadic closure leads to bias in other friendship formation effects [Mouw & Entwisle 2006].
The Advantages of a Social Network Approach for Addressing Developmental Questions
We adopt a social network approach to help understand the multiple developmental and contextual processes contributing to adolescents’ friendships. Specifically, we estimate an Exponential Random Graph Model [ERGM] which models a network as a function of individual, dyadic, and other structural characteristics [Robins, Pattison, Kalish, & Lusher, 2007]. A key feature of the ERGM approach is that it treats the dyad as the unit of analysis. Thus, for any pair of adolescents, it estimates the likelihood that a friendship exists. In our case, we estimate how activity co-participation affects the likelihood of a friendship while controlling for homophily and triadic closure. By controlling for the interdependence of actors, this method provides an unbiased estimate of the probability that adolescents in the same activity will be friends, net of alternative relationship processes.
Study Hypotheses
In this study, we tested four hypotheses. First, we expected friendships to be more likely among activity co-participants than among adolescents who do not participate in the same activity. Second, we expected the positive associations between co-participation and friendships to be stronger in high school than middle school. Third, we expected the positive associations between co-participation and friendship to be stronger in arts and academic activities than in sports activities. Finally, we hypothesized that activity co-participants would more likely become friends in the future than adolescents who do not participate in the same activity.
Method
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health [Add Health] is a nationally representative study of 7th through 12th grade adolescents across the United States [Udry, 2003]. Add Health is well-suited for network analysis because it targeted the complete student population of schools, which allows for the identification of friendship networks. Because Add Health includes both students and their friends, it provides self-report data on all measures of interest. Our investigation includes two related samples from Wave I of Add Health: [a] a cross-sectional sample of 67,124 participants in 108 schools who completed an initial in-school questionnaire and [b] a longitudinal sample of 2,550 adolescents in 2 schools who also completed an in-home questionnaire approximately eight months later.
Participants
School information
For the initial wave of in-school data collection, 172 schools were selected. Schools that had no grade levels, were single-gender, or were special education schools were excluded from the analyses [n = 3]. Because our analysis requires a relatively complete picture of the entire school network, we retained only students from schools with a response rate of at least 75% [61 schools were eliminated based on this criteria]. We compared adolescents in the retained schools [n= 70,223 adolescents in 109 schools] to adolescents in schools that were excluded [n= 19,895 adolescents in 35 schools]. Retained adolescents were similar to excluded adolescents in terms of gender, race, SES, activity participation, GPA, problem behavior, physical health, and depression [effect sizes: Φ’s