Peer, school, and country variations in adolescents’ health behaviour: A multilevel analysis of binary response variables in six European cities

Abstract

Adolescents often display similar health behaviour to their peers. Peer effects on health behaviour may be influenced by the school context, and by the country of residence. According to the complex contagion theory, these effects for risky health behaviour may be different from protective health behaviour. This paper combines social network analysis and multilevel analysis to estimate the relative share of variation of risky and protective health behaviours at different levels of the population structure: individuals, peer (friendship) networks, and schools. To achieve these aims, multiple membership models are applied to estimate variations in smoking, drinking, cannabis use, and physical activity at the individual, peer, and school levels, taking into account the differences between countries. The data come from a social network survey carried out in 50 schools in six medium-sized European cities. Networks of peers were found to have similar risky health behaviour when it comes to smoking, drinking, and cannabis use. This was not true, however, for positive health behaviour, i.e. physical activity. For smoking, drinking, and cannabis use, the peer network accounted for almost half of the total behaviour variance. In comparison, the school variance was quite small for all health behaviour. The results suggest that interventions are best carried out at the peernetwork level, particularly for behaviour vulnerable to complex contagion, such as smoking and cannabis use. Keywords: social network analysis; whole network design; multilevel analysis; health behaviour; adolescent health; international comparison; Highlights: • The peer network accounted for half of the variance for risky health behaviour. • This was not true for physical activity, a protective health behaviour. • School corresponds to a much smaller share of the overall variation for these behaviours. • Future public health research on adolescents should emphasise peer-level components, particularly for risky behaviour.

Problematic Internet use among residential college students during the COVID-19 lockdown: A social network analysis approach

“…Relationships between objective peer effects and PIU reveal significant patterns. Our results differ from previous studies focused on adolescents, which consistently show a positive relationship between objective peer effects and deviant behaviors (Haynie, 2002;Lorant & Tranmer, 2019;Rulison et al, 2014). In our study, the objective peer effects-indegree, betweenness, and percentage of PIU peers-were not direct risk factors for the adoption of problematic behaviors among college students, a more mature group than adolescents.…”

“…Social capital theory (Kawachi & Berkman, 2014), complex contagion theory (Centola & Macy, 2007), and social bond theory (Hirschi, 1969) suggest that prosocial and antisocial behaviors could be diffused through a peer network. Empirical evidence demonstrated that misconduct is more contagious during adolescence than childhood and emerging adulthood (Daw, Margolis, & Verdery, 2015;Lorant & Tranmer, 2019), whereas prosocial conduct or nondeviant behaviors are less contagious (Rulison, Kreager, & Wayne Osgood, 2014). Moffitt (1993) described this as the gap between one's biological and social maturity.…”

“…A recent narrative review (Hoeben, Meldrum, Walker, & Young, 2016) suggested that future studies should use a social network analysis (SNA) to measure objective peer effects, while avoiding measurement bias (e.g., assumed similarity bias and samesource bias) caused by subjective measures. However, recent antisocial behavior and health studies using SNA mostly focus on adolescents (Haynie, 2002;Lorant & Tranmer, 2019), and college student populations remain largely underexplored (Hoeben et al, 2016). Additionally, studies attributing PIU to peer effects seldom employ SNA.…”

Factors Affecting Social Exclusion, Friendship Quality, Social Competence and Emotion Management Skills and the Effect of Problem Behaviors on Related Characteristics in Adolescents

“…The findings on depressive affect, feeling unhappy and hopeless, the intimacy dimension and the positive, enhancing effect of caring dimensions explaining social exclusion by friends support other findings and related literature (Schwartz-Mette, Smith, 2018;Lorant, Tranmer, 2019). Mobbing in the business world is seen as peer bullying in peer relationships and bullying in love affairs or personal relationships (Siyez, M., Aysan, 2007;Vanderbilt, Augustyn, 2010).…”

Trends of Healthy Lifestyles Among Adolescents: An Analysis of More Than Half a Million Participants From 32 Countries Between 2006 and 2014

“…Among adolescents, the social environment influences health behaviors mainly related to alcohol and smoking. Networks of peers were found to have similar risky health behaviors when it comes to smoking, drinking, and cannabis use ( 33 ). Regarding smoking behavior, our data showed a significant and positive trend to improvement among boys and girls with 13–14 years and 15–16 years.…”