Adolescent Crowd Affiliation

Two methods for identifying crowd-affiliation in adolescence were compared using a predominately Latino sample of 285 eighth-grade students. The two methods were: (1) one-on-one interviews of crowd leaders using Brown?s (1989) Social Type Rating (STR) procedure and (2) a peer nomination inventory administered to all the participants. Participants also completed peer nomination measures to assess students? social and behavioral reputations at school and a self-report inventory assessing their academic engagement and emotional adjustment. In addition, grade point averages were obtained from school records. Correlational analyses of the crowd affiliation data obtained from both procedures indicate that the peer nomination approach and the STR procedure yield highly similar results (with correlations ranging from r(285)=.30 to .69, p\u3c.01). The results also indicate similar relations between the crowd affiliation data obtained using the two approaches and the socio-emotional and academic adjustment variables. Taken together, these findings suggest that the STR procedure and the peer nomination approach work equally well in mapping out the social terrain in adolescence