title: Friends First? The Peer Network Origins of Adolescent Dating.
abstract: The proximity of dating partners in peer friendship networks has important implications for the diffusion of health-risk behaviors and adolescent social development. We derive two competing hypotheses for the friendship-romance association. The first predicts that daters are proximally positioned in friendship networks prior to dating and that opposite-gender friends are likely to transition to dating. The second predicts that dating typically crosses group boundaries and opposite-gender friends are unlikely to later date. We test these hypotheses with longitudinal friendship data for 626 9thgrade PROSPER heterosexual dating couples. Results primarily support the second hypothesis: romantic partners are unlikely to be friends in the previous year or share the same cohesive subgroup, and opposite-gender friends are unlikely to transition into dating.
authors.affiliation: Pennsylvania State University.
authors.forename: Derek A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Kreager
authors.affiliation: University of Virginia.
authors.forename: Lauren E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Molloy
authors.affiliation: Duke University & King Abdulaziz University.
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Moody
authors.affiliation: Pennsylvania State University.
authors.forename: Mark E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Feinberg