Introduction: Paving the way towards inclusive education, it is essential to aim for positive social outcomes for all students, including cultivating a positive self-concept and fostering acceptance and friendships with peers. Although self-concept, acceptance and friendships are interrelated, research focussing on the relationship between these…

Drawing on a developmental psychopathology perspective and research documenting gender differences in social tasks and structures of friendships, this study uses longitudinal social network analysis (SNA) methods to (a) examine how fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and gender interact to shape friendship dynamics and (b) characterize their…

Prior research has found that student achievement is positively related to students' social standing in class. However, negative stereotypes about high academic achievers prevail among secondary school students, suggesting that higher achievers might be less well-integrated socially. These stereotypes especially target academically high-achieving…

Peer relationships in lower-secondary classrooms play a crucial part in students' academic and personal lives. This study uses social network analysis to investigate aspects influencing formation of both likeability and antipathy ties between students in Czech lower-secondary schools, with a special focus on the role on socioeconomic status. Data…

This study explores the subjective experiences and perceptions related to intimacy in friendships in a group of aggressive-popular adolescents in urban schools characterized by high rates of community violence. Individual interviews were conducted with 12 volunteering adolescents (12-14 years old). Procedures from grounded theory were used to…

The objective of this exploratory study was to examine the interpersonal dynamics of an after-school math club for middle schoolers. Using social network analysis, 2 networks were identified and analyzed: (a) a network of friendship relationships and (b) a network of working relationships. The interconnections and correlations between friendship…

We explored how gender and gender similarity affects friendship dissolution following the transition to middle school. We predicted that both gender and gender similarity (measured by perceived similarity to own-gender and other-gender peers) explain dissolution trends and that less own-gender similarity or more other-gender similarity predicts…

The friendship experiences of adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were explored in this qualitative study. Nine 16- to 18-year old adolescents with ADHD participated in semi-structured interviews that were analyzed using a modified grounded theory framework. They reported chronic peer rejection, loneliness, and…

Background: Very-low-income students are a population at a high risk of perpetrating and suffering bullying at school, and at the same time the peer group at school is often one of the few sources of support for these minors. Objective: This two-wave study is aimed to disambiguate the two different roles of peer acceptance and friendship on…

This mixed-method study examines students' expectations and concerns before transitioning from primary to lower secondary school and the role of students' school-related wellbeing and self-esteem in their concerns. Students reported their beliefs about the forthcoming school transition and filled in a questionnaire assessing school burnout and…

This study examined the role of academic status norms in friendship selection and influence processes related to academic achievement across the 2nd year of secondary school (SNARE project; N = 1,549 students from 70 classes; Mage = 13.69 years). Academic status norms were operationalized as the class-level correlation between academic achievement…

Objectives: Adolescents endeavor to meet their social needs, to be accepted and to develop close friendship relationships. However, quality and close relationships may not always be possible. Identity development may be affected if adolescents cannot be included in social groups and cannot establish quality friendship relationships. This can be…

This study investigated the gender-specific effects of social achievement goals -- i.e., social development goals, social demonstration approach goals, and social demonstration avoid goals -- on bullying perpetration in a sample of 788 adolescents (53.3% girls), taking into account the mediating role of sense of belonging and non-inclusive group…

Overweight youth are often socially marginalized and have fewer friends than their nonoverweight peers. Participation in organized activities may be one way to promote friendships for overweight youth. In this study, we used a large nationally representative sample to test whether two aspects of participation promoted friendships, namely the…

Rejection sensitivity (RS) is a cognitive and affective disposition to defensively expect, perceive, and overreact to signs of rejection by others. The current study examined the role of RS as a mediating mechanism underlying the relation between school relations with peers and teachers and solitude in early adolescence. Italian middle school…