Abstract
Adolescence is a developmental period when peer network structure is associated with mental health. However, how networks relate to distress for youth at different intersecting racial/ethnic and gender identities is unclear. Using National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health survey data, cross-sectional models examine peer network cohesion predicting adolescent depressive levels for racial/ethnic and gender groups. The analytic sample is N = 13,055, average age 15.3 years, 50.2% female, 68.8 % White, 17.2% Black, 9.7% Hispanic, and 4.2% Asian. The results indicate that average cohesion, depressive levels, and cohesion associated with depressive levels differ by race/ethnicity and gender, with the greatest benefits for White and Black girls. This work clarifies patterns of adolescent networks and mental health by race/ethnicity and gender.
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Notes
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Longitudinal social network data in Add Health are only collected in a subset of 16 schools, meaning longitudinal analyses do not have a sufficient sample size to examine distinct racial/ethnic and gender groups.
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to Allison Stolte, Jessica S. West, and Scott Lynch for their helpful comments.
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M.C. contributed to study design and led manuscript drafting; C.K. completed data cleaning and analyses and contributed to study design and writing. Both authors read and approved the final version of this manuscript.
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C.K. is supported by the grant T32 AG00129, awarded to the Center for Demography of Health and Aging at the University of Wisconsin-Madison by the National Institute on Aging. This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, or Add Health. Add Health is directed by Robert A. Hummer and funded by the National Institute on Aging cooperative agreements U01 AG071448 (Hummer) and U01AG071450 (Aiello and Hummer) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Waves I-V data are from the Add Health Program Project, grant P01 HD31921 (Harris) from Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Add Health was designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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This manuscript’s data will not be deposited. See https://addhealth.cpc.unc.edu/data/ for more information about how to access Add Health data.
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Copeland, M., Kamis, C. Who Does Cohesion Benefit? Race, Gender, and Peer Networks Associated with Adolescent Depressive Symptoms. J Youth Adolescence 51, 1787–1797 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01631-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01631-3