Abstract
The present study proposed to understand how same-sex and other-sex peer nominations relate differently to teacher reports of children’s behaviors and measures of children’s friendships. Students provided peer nominations, mutual friend data, and social network data. Teachers rated students’ antisocial behavior and social competence. As expected, other-sex peer social preference scores predicted teacher ratings of antisocial behavior, while same-sex peer social preference scores predicted data on friendships and social groups. Unexpectedly, both same and other sex peer nominations predicted children’s teacher-rated social competence. Findings suggest that other-sex peers offer a unique perspective on children’s social behavior that is neither superfluous nor unimportant to understanding children’s psychosocial adjustment.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge David Henry, Betsy Hoza, Kathryn Keenan, Benjamin Lahey, A. Michele Lease, Lauren Wakschlag, and the reviewers for their thoughtful and substantive comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.
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Frazier, S.L., Atkins, M.S., Olson, L.H. et al. Same-Sex and Other-Sex Peer Reports: Unique Contributors to Understanding Children’s School Adjustment. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 31, 152–158 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-008-9105-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-008-9105-1