Delinquent Peers Revisited: Does Network Structure Matter?

TLDR

The study tests whether friendship‑network structure moderates the link between peers’ delinquency and an individual’s delinquent behavior. Using Add Health data, the authors model friendship networks and measure peer delinquency more precisely than prior studies. Friends’ delinquency predicts adolescents’ delinquency, but this association is stronger in denser, more central networks; thus network density is a key moderator of peer influence on delinquency.

Abstract

This study examines whether structural properties of friendship networks condition the association between friends' delinquency and an individual's own delinquent behavior. Data from the Add Health allows a more accurate conceptualization of the peer network and a more rigorous measurement of peer delinquency than previous research. Findings from this study indicate that friends' delinquency is associated with an adolescent's own delinquency involvement. However, characteristics of adolescents' friendship networks, such as its density and adolescents' centrality and popularity, condition the delinquency‐peer association. Network density, in particular, emerges as an important component of the delinquency‐peer association, with very cohesive networks containing stronger delinquency‐peer associations than those that are less cohesive. These findings suggest that it is necessary to consider the underlying structural properties of friendship networks in order to understand the impact of peer influence on adolescent delinquency.