Students’ delinquency and correlates with strong and weaker ties: A study of students’ networks in Dutch high schools

The goal of the present study was to investigate three issues in the current debate on youth delinquency: (1) Whether the level of delinquency of adolescents is negatively correlated with the quality of her/his personal networks (as stated by the social inability model) or not (as stated by the social ability model); (2) Whether there is homophily in adolescents’ networks regarding degree of delinquency; and (3) Whether homophily regarding the degree of delinquency is more pronounced for strong relationships than for weak relationships. A network survey, the Dutch Social Behavior Study, was carried out on 1,317 students (aged 15 to 17 years) in 20 high schools. Students completed a self-report questionnaire about petty crime and nominated fellow students for ten different types of relationships, both positive and negative and varying from weak to strong. Results showed that (1) the quality of the personal networks of delinquents and non-delinquents did not differ over any positive relationship. Delinquents seemed to avoid others a little more than nondelinquents, but were not avoided more; (2) the level of delinquency of students involved in positive relationships was correlated. This was caused partially by sex segregation; and (3) Homophily in weak-tie networks was not smaller than in strong-tie networks.