In plain language
Teenagers often sort themselves into reputation-based "crowds", the studious kids, the athletes, the populars, the rebels, and so on. It is widely assumed these crowds shape how young people turn out, but earlier research could rarely separate the effect of the crowd itself from the traits students already had before they joined it. This study set out to test that link properly.
Following a large sample of Australian high school students, the researchers asked young people in Year 7 which kind of students they hung around with, then tracked their end-of-year grades, teacher ratings of adjustment and behaviour, and self-reported emotions through Years 8 and 9. Crucially, they controlled for each student's baseline level on every outcome, so they could see whether early crowd membership predicted change over time rather than just pre-existing differences.
Crowd identity in Year 7 predicted grades, adjustment, and emotional experience two years later, even after controlling for baseline scores and gender. Self-nominated rebels consistently fared worst: they had the weakest grades, the most behavioural problems, the poorest teacher-rated adjustment, and the lowest positive affect, and their grades and behaviour worsened relative to peers over time. The authors warn of a "cascading risk", where early problems compound year on year, and call for early identification of at-risk students.
Key findings
- Peer crowd identity in Year 7 predicted school grades, teacher-rated adjustment, and emotional experience in Year 9, even after controlling for Year 8 baseline levels and gender.
- Self-nominated rebels had the poorest outcomes across domains: weakest grades, highest behavioural problems, lowest adjustment, and lowest positive affect.
- Rebels' grades and behaviour worsened over time relative to other groups who had the same baseline grades.
- The general and studious groups tended to fare best on grades and teacher-rated adjustment, while populars reported the highest positive affect.
- Crowd membership explained roughly 3–6% of the variance in outcomes, a notable effect given it was measured with a single self-nomination item.
- Using multiple methods (self-report, grades, and teacher ratings) argues against the results being an artifact of shared method variance.
How to cite
APA
Heaven, P. C. L., Ciarrochi, J., & Vialle, W. (2008). Self-nominated peer crowds, school achievement, and psychological adjustment in adolescents: Longitudinal analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 44(4), 977–988. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2007.10.031
BibTeX
@article{heaven2008self,
title = {Self-nominated peer crowds, school achievement, and psychological adjustment in adolescents: Longitudinal analysis},
author = {Heaven, Patrick C. L. and Ciarrochi, Joseph and Vialle, Wilma},
journal = {Personality and Individual Differences},
volume = {44},
number = {4},
pages = {977--988},
year = {2008},
doi = {10.1016/j.paid.2007.10.031}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.