Antecedents and consequences of helping among adolescents

The onset of adolescence is a challenging period in life, given that adolescents face a myriad of social, cognitive, and biological developments. Adolescents do not confront these challenges on their own, but seek help from their social network. Classmates play an important role herein, but there is little knowledge about help relations among adolescents. In her dissertation, Loes van Rijsewijk provides answers to questions such as who helps whom, what does a help network look like, and what are the consequences of help? To map out help networks, over 1000 adolescents were asked to identify classmates who help them with problems. This approach added novel insights to the existing body of knowledge on adolescent help behavior. Amongst others, Loes found that help behavior is selective, that is, primarily asked from or directed towards similar others and friends, that tendencies towards giving and receiving help vary over friendships and contexts, and that help affects social embeddedness, achievement, and depressive symptoms. Together, these results form a first, important step towards unraveling adolescents’ help networks

Who Helps Whom? Investigating the Development of Adolescent Prosocial Relationships

We investigated adolescent prosocial relations by examining social networks based on the question "Who helps you (e.g., with homework, with repairing a flat [bicycle] tire, or when you are feeling down?)." The effects of individual characteristics (academic achievement, symptoms of depressive mood, and peer status) on receiving help and giving help were examined, and we investigated the contribution of (dis)similarity between adolescents to the development of prosocial relations. Gender, structural network characteristics, and friendship relations were taken into account. Data were derived from the Social Network Analysis of Risk behavior in Early adolescence (SNARE) study, and contained information on students in 40 secondary school classes across 3 waves (N = 840, M age = 13.4, 49.7% boys). Results from longitudinal social network analyses (RSiena) revealed tendencies toward reciprocation of help and exchange of help within helping groups. Furthermore, boys were less often mentioned as helpers, particularly by girls. Depressed adolescents were less often mentioned as helpers, especially by low-depressed peers. Moreover, lower academic achievers indicated that they received help from their higher achieving peers. Rejected adolescents received help more often, but they less often helped low-rejected peers. Last, low-and high-popular adolescents less often helped each other, and also high-popular adolescents less often helped each other. These findings show that (dis) similarity in these characteristics is an important driving factor underlying the emergence and development of prosocial relations in the peer context, and that prosocial behavior should be defined in terms of benefitting particular others.</p

A description of classroom help networks, individual network position, and their associations with academic achievement

This study examined how classroom peer relations can be described in terms of the network of help relations among students, and the positions students take up in this help network, and whether the structure of adolescent classroom help networks and individual network positions were associated with academic achievement. Help networks were based on the peer nomination question "Who helps you with problems?" Building on previous studies on classroom climate and individual network position, higher academic achievement was expected in classrooms with: a dense help network; no or a few network isolates (referring to students that did not give or receive help at all); less segmentation in help relations; equally distributed help nominations. In addition, higher achievement was expected for individuals with more helpers and a more central position in the help network. Using the Dutch SNARE data (54 classrooms; 1,144 students), the multilevel models suggested that lower achievement was related to an unequal distribution of help relations in a classroom. Moreover, the centrality of individuals in the help network was linked to higher achievement. Classrooms varied strongly on network dimensions, and networks that would theoretically be expected to be most beneficial for achievement (with high density, a few isolates, low segmentation, and high equality) turned out to be highly uncommon. The findings demonstrated that subtle network processes were relevant for academic success, and that classroom network characteristics are associated with classroom-level variation in academic achievement. Descriptive results underlined the complexity of the social context of classrooms, and the absence of 'beneficial' classrooms suggests that researchers should adjust their notion of what is a beneficial or detrimental classroom environment for adolescents

Antecedents and consequences of helping among adolescents

The onset of adolescence is a challenging period in life, given that adolescents face a myriad of social, cognitive, and biological developments. Adolescents do not confront these challenges on their own, but seek help from their social network. Classmates play an important role herein, but there is little knowledge about help relations among adolescents. In her dissertation, Loes van Rijsewijk provides answers to questions such as who helps whom, what does a help network look like, and what are the consequences of help? To map out help networks, over 1000 adolescents were asked to identify classmates who help them with problems. This approach added novel insights to the existing body of knowledge on adolescent help behavior. Amongst others, Loes found that help behavior is selective, that is, primarily asked from or directed towards similar others and friends, that tendencies towards giving and receiving help vary over friendships and contexts, and that help affects social embeddedness, achievement, and depressive symptoms. Together, these results form a first, important step towards unraveling adolescents’ help networks