Friendship Homophily Among Children and Youth in Multicultural Classes

Abstract

Friendship homophily is a preference principle referring to the tendency that friendships between similar people occur at a higher rate than among dissimilar ones. Same cultural or ethnic background is one aspect of similarity on which friendship choices are based. Friendship homophily is often measured with the percentage of same ethnic friends out of all friends. However, the pattern to have friends from the same cultural group is not only a result of personal preference but also of opportunity structures. The present study took into account that friendship networks of particular children also mirror the opportunity structures in classes by correcting the percentage of same ethnic friends for the particular opportunity structure. It was investigated whether friendship homophily is moderated by age, gender and cultural group of the study participants. Friendship networks of 188 primary school students (grade 4, 10 years old), 666 vocational secondary school students (grade 7 and 8, 13 14 years old), and 246 pre-vocational training school students (grade 9, 15 16 years old) were available for analyses. The analyses revealed no gender differences, but showed that the age effect was moderated by cultural group and that the correction for the opportunity structure led to very different conclusions than using simple percentages.