Interventions targeting the most influential adolescents, leveraging spillover effects to influence their peers, have emerged as a promising and cost-efficient approach to fostering behavioral change in schools. However, previous research has yielded inconsistent findings on identifying these influential individuals, thereby limiting the effectiveness and replicability of such interventions.
The primary aim of this project was to enhance the identification of influential adolescents by integrating insights from social network science, psychology, and sociology. We sought to improve our understanding of how social networks, especially friendships, act as conduits for spreading attitudes and behaviors among adolescents. By identifying key mechanisms and characteristics that enable certain adolescents to exert significant influence, this project addressed gaps in both theory and methodology.
In schools, adolescents are linked to each other via relationships, representing a social network of adolescents. Relationships, especially friendships, function as channels along which adolescents can influence each other. Consequently, such relationships cause attitudes and behaviors to spread among adolescents. To understand who are especially influential adolescents, we must identify adolescents who are the most efficient in leveraging these networks to spread attitudes and behaviors. To this end, social network science plays a crucial role in understanding how these attitudes and behaviors spread. We combined social network methods with psychological and sociological theories to improve the identification of the most influential adolescents in schools.
Although the question of whether there are adolescents who have an especially big influence on classmates has been in the scope of researchers studying different outcomes, e.g. inter-ethnic attitudes and bullying, the systematic investigation of various social settings and outcomes has been missing. To achieve our objectives, we examined influential adolescents in diverse contexts—academic drive, interethnic attitudes, and religiosity—focusing on common characteristics that underpin their influence. This approach allowed us to establish indicators of social influence applicable across varying social settings. Our research extended beyond traditional methods by incorporating novel elements, such as normative pressure, to provide a more nuanced understanding of how attitudes and behaviors spread in schools.
To reach our goal, we outlined three original objectives. In the course of the project, we identified gaps in methods and theory that needed to be addressed to complete the objectives and reach the main goal. To this end, we identified two new objectives.
Original objectives:
Drawing on interdisciplinary literature, our first objective (O1) was to build a theoretical model. Our second objective (O2) is to calibrate a theoretical model developed in O1 and consequently test hypotheses derived from this model with empirical data on the change of networks and attitudes among adolescents in classrooms. Our third objective (O3) was to simulate a hypothetical cost-efficient network intervention that exploits spill-over effects from most influential adolescents to all classroom members.
New objectives:
Norms are an important form of peer influence when students are inclined to adopt attitudes and behaviors endorsed by their peers. The fourth objective (O4) was to methodologically and theoretically incorporate normative pressure as a form of peer influence into studying how attitudes and behaviors spread in schools alongside the influence of friends. The fifth objective (O5) was to capture mechanisms that enable some adolescents to spread attitudes and behaviors among peers more efficiently than others.
