title: Considering Friends Within the Context of Peers in School for the Development of Ethnic/Racial Identity.
abstract: The importance of ethnicity/race for adolescents' identity (i.e., centrality), and how that importance changes over time, may in part be a function of the social contexts that they inhabit. Although centrality has shown to be an adaptive component of ethnic/racial identity, little is known about how centrality changes during adolescence in relation to these social contexts. The current study examined the role of same-ethnic/racial peers and friends in the longitudinal development of ethnic/racial identity centrality. Drawing on four waves of data over 2 years collected with a diverse sample of 350 adolescents (Mage at W1= 15.2; 69 % female), the findings indicated that when adolescents had a greater proportion of same-ethnic/racial friends, they reported feeling that their ethnic/racial identity was more central to their sense of self six months later. However, this effect was strongest among adolescents with a low proportion of same-ethnic/racial peers in school, and weakest among adolescents with a high proportion of same-ethnic/racial peers in school. The implications of these findings for our understanding of the joint effects of peer and friend diversity in relation to ethnic/racial identity are discussed.
authors.affiliation: T. Denny Sanford School of Family and Social Dynamics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA. sara.douglass@asu.edu.
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Douglass
authors.affiliation: Fordham University, Bronx, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Sheena
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mirpuri
authors.affiliation: Fordham University, Bronx, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Tiffany
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yip
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D033062:Friends / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D010379:Peer Group; D011822:Race Relations; D012574:Schools; D012933:Social Identification; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Adolescence; Ethnic-racial identity; Friends; Peers