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Abstract

This investigation examined several aspects of the construct social crowd in 489 White 7th, 9th, and 11th graders. The goals of the study were to examine (a) the congruence between self- and peer-nominated crowd membership and (b) the extent to which social crowd serves to channel adolescents’ friendships. Self- and peer-nominated crowd were reasonably congruent and both related in the same way to delinquency, substance use, and grade point average, suggesting that for many purposes it may not matter which method of measuring crowd is used. The evidence is also moderately consistent with the hypothesis that crowds serve to channel adolescent friendships. Adolescents were friendliest to their own crowd and had more than the expected number of friends from their own crowd and crowds similar to their own.

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Adolescent Social Crowds

Abstract

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