Abstract
Social support from peers and parents provides a key socialization function during adolescence. We examine adolescent friendship networks using a Stochastic Actor-Based modeling approach to observe the flow of emotional support provision to peers and the effect of support from parents, while simultaneously modeling smoking behavior. We utilized one school (n = 976) from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (AddHealth) Study. Our findings suggest that emotional support is transacted through an interdependent contextual system, comprised of both peer and parental effects, with the latter also having distal indirect effects from youths’ friends’ parents.
Highlights
Studies over recent decades indicate the vital role social support plays in health [1,2,3]
Social support serves varied functions for health and health behavior, with emotional support generally extending to intimacy, attachment, and the ability to confide in and rely on someone, all of which contribute to feeling cared for [4]
We found evidence that emotional support provision diffuses through key network structures, including transitive triads
Summary
Studies over recent decades indicate the vital role social support plays in health [1,2,3]. Social support serves varied functions for health and health behavior, with emotional support generally extending to intimacy, attachment, and the ability to confide in and rely on someone, all of which contribute to feeling cared for [4]. Peer relationships gain increasing importance, becoming as salient a source of support for youth as are their parents [12]. Studies suggest that adolescents view both their friends [13,14,15] and parents [16,17,18] as primary sources of social support, including emotional support [19,20]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call