Interracial Friendship Choices in Secondary Schools

Hallinan, Maureen T.; Williams, Richard

doi:10.2307/2095662

Cited by 353 publications

(218 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

205

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Earlier studies after desegregation projects in the US (Hallinan & Smith, 1985;Hallinan & Williams, 1989) and more recent studies in the US (Bellmore, Nishina, Witkov, Graham, & Juvonen, 2007;Graham & Cohen, 1997;Kao & Joyner, 2004), Canada (Schneider, Udvari, & Dixon, 2007) and Europe (Verkuyten, 2001) suggest that crossethnic friendships are uncommon and low in quality. Undoubtedly, the social context, in particular the ethnic composition of schools and classrooms, and the ethnic status of children (majority vs. minority), plays a significant role in how peer relationships are formed during childhood (Graham, Taylor, & Ho, 2009;Kawabata & Crick, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Cross-ethnic friendships: Are they really rare? Evidence from secondary schools around London

Bağcı¹,

Kumashiro²,

Smith³

et al. 2014

International Journal of Intercultural Relations

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study examined current cross-ethnic friendship patterns in secondary schools around London, UK, and the effects of ethnic group and ethnic diversity on cross-ethnic friendship selection and quality. Questionnaires including self-report ethnic group definitions and measures of same-/cross-ethnic friendship numbers, along with the quality of 3 best crossethnic friends, were distributed to 684 Year 7 (aged 11) British students (256 White European, 63 Middle Easterner, 118 Black, 247 South Asian) recruited from 9 multi-ethnic secondary schools (37 classrooms) in Greater London. In contrast to most previous research which suggested the relative rarity of cross-ethnic friendships, findings showed that crossethnic friendships were in fact frequent and of high quality, outnumbering same-ethnic friendships for all ethnic groups.After controlling for gender, classroom gender composition, percentage of available same-ethnic peers, ethnic identity and perceived discrimination, classroom ethnic diversity still had a marginally positive effect on cross-ethnic friendship selection, but had no effect on cross-ethnic friendship quality. White British children reported higher cross-ethnic friendship selection and lower cross-ethnic friendship quality compared to other ethnic groups, but this depended on classroom ethnic diversity. Implications of the findings are discussed in the light of intergroup contact and friendship theories. We conclude that research on cross-ethnic friendships is crucial in providing insights into how integration at the social level starts during early childhood in modern multi-ethnic settings like London secondary schools.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Cross-ethnic friendships: Are they really rare? Evidence from secondary schools around London

Bağcı¹,

Kumashiro²,

Smith³

et al. 2014

International Journal of Intercultural Relations

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Though groups are able to form along many different dimensions of social life, race and ethnicity represent two of the more salient dimensions for fostering group identity. Patterns of friendship networks among adolescents (Hallinan and Williams 1989;Moody 2001;Moody and White 2003;Mouw and Entwisle 2006;Quillian and Campbell 2003), the formation of work teams within organizations (Hinds et al 2000;Ruef et al 2003), and inter-group marriage (Alba and Golden 1986;Gray 1987;Jones 1991;South and Messner 1986) have all been examined with a focus on the rate of intra-and inter-racial interactions. With violence being a ubiquitous feature of urban centers, and given the significant change in the demographic composition of cities over the last half century, it is not surprising that rates and patterns of intra-and inter-personal violence have also garnered much attention.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A New Twist on an Old Approach: A Random-Interaction Approach for Estimating Rates of Inter-Group Interaction

2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

There are numerous instances in which researchers wish to measure the rate of intra-or inter-group interactions (whether positive or negative). When computing such measures as rates there is great uncertainty regarding the appropriate denominator: we analytically illustrate how the choice of the denominator when calculating such rates is not trivial and that some existing strategies create a built-in relationship between the computed rate and the group composition within the entity. Another strand of prior work only focused on the relative occurrence of intra-versus inter-group events, which does not account for the important theoretical possibility that both types of events might increase in certain social contexts. Our approach provides an advance over these earlier strategies as it allows one to take into account the relative frequency of interaction between members of different groups, but then translates this into per capita rates. We also provide an empirical example using data on inter-and intra-group robbery and aggravated assault events for block groups in a section of the city of Los Angeles to illustrate how our procedure works and to illustrate how other approaches can lead to dramatically different conclusions.

show abstract

“…For instance, researchers have adapted dyad analysis to eliminate the confounding effect of group size (Hallinan and Teixeira, 1987;Moody, 2001;Quillian and Campbell, 2003;Mouw and Entwisle, 2006); controlled individual-level structural variations, such as shared school activities (Moody, 2001) and school segregation (Mouw and Entwisle, 2006); and used exponential random graph models to take balancing reciprocity into consideration (Goodreau, 2007, Goodreau et al, 2009, Wimmer and Lewis, 2010. Furthermore, separating out the effects of structural constraints has been discussed extensively as a methodological challenge (Cheng and Xie, 2012;Currarini et al, 2010;Feld, 1981;McPherson and Smith-Lovin, 1987;Hallinan and Williams, 1989;McPherson et al, 2001;Moody, 2001;Mayer and Puller, 2008;Quillan and Campbell, 2003;Mouw and Entwisle, 2006;Wimmer and Lewis, 2010;Zeng and Xie, 2008).…”

Section: Choice: Unconstrained Preference Versus Structural Constraintmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As in the old adage, "birds of a feather flock together," it has long been noted that friends tend to be similar to each other (for a review, see McPherson et al, [2001]). In past studies, preference based on homophilic group identity has been conceptualized as "in-group preference" (Blau, 1977), "similarity effects" (Hallinan and Williams, 1989), "net friendship segregation" (Moody, 2001), "assortative mixing" (Goodreau et al, 2009), and "choice homophily" (Kossinets and Watts, 2009). Why, then, do people prefer to befriend those with the same social identity as their own?…”

Section: In-group Identity Preferencementioning

confidence: 99%

Preference effects on friendship choice: Evidence from an online field experiment

Xie

2017

Social Science Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Realized friendship choices result from the combined forces of not only personal preferences but also opportunity structures. Thus, it is not possible to infer preference effects from observed friendship data without invoking unrealistic assumptions about opportunity structures. In this paper, we report a study, based on an online field experiment, demonstrating the role of preference in friendship choice. Specifically, we test the influences of preferences in two dimensions: (1) identity homophily --preference for other persons of the same or similar identity, and (2) status asymmetry --preference for other persons of higher social status. We empirically tested these preference effects with an online field experiment in one of the largest social network service (SNS) websites in China. The results of our study confirm the preference effects on friendship choice in both of the two dimensions we tested.

show abstract

Interracial Friendship Choices in Secondary Schools

Cited by 353 publications

References 12 publications

Cross-ethnic friendships: Are they really rare? Evidence from secondary schools around London

Cross-ethnic friendships: Are they really rare? Evidence from secondary schools around London

A New Twist on an Old Approach: A Random-Interaction Approach for Estimating Rates of Inter-Group Interaction

Preference effects on friendship choice: Evidence from an online field experiment

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About