Revisiting Selection and Influence: An Inquiry into the Friendship Networks of High School Students and Their Association with Delinquency

Abstract

Criminologists tend to assume that friends are fairly similar in their delinquent behaviours. However, the process leading to this similarity is not fully understood. It is not clear whether similarity in delinquent behaviour among friends is the result of a selection- or of an influence process. In this article, we investigate this issue using longitudinal data on students’ friendship networks and their delinquent behaviour in 16 Dutch high schools (n = 859). For the analysis, we made use of SIENA, a technique for the simultaneous analysis of the dynamics of both networks and behaviour. A meta-analysis showed influence to be a general process without variation over the schools, while selection played a role in only 4 of the 16 schools.