Peer Processes Research Articles

Delinquency Balance and Time Use

McGloin (2009) recently demonstrated that an imbalance in delinquency between a subject and his or her best friend predicted within-individual changes in offending behavior. Still, the precise mechanism(s) whereby subjects moved toward delinquency balance remained unclear. It is possible that this process has little to do with the transmission of deviant values, but instead is a reflection of unstructured and unsupervised time spent with peers. The results suggest that an imbalance in time use between peers predicts an imbalance in deviance between peers, but not within-individual change in delinquency. The discussion considers the implication of these findings for theory and research on peer processes.

The effect of peer influence and selection processes on adolescent alcohol use: a systematic review of longitudinal studies

Adolescent alcohol use remains an important public health concern. One of the most salient and consistent predictors for drinking behaviour among young people is peer influence. A systematic review of longitudinal studies that examined the effect of peer influence on adolescent alcohol use between January 1997 and February 2011 is presented. Twenty-two studies fulfilled inclusion criteria and were reviewed. All but one study confirmed affiliation with alcohol-using or deviant peers as prospective predictors for the development of adolescent alcohol use. Findings revealed that existing longitudinal studies that have used multivariate analytic techniques to segregate peer influence (whereby adolescents start drinking after exposure to alcohol-using friends) and peer selection (whereby adolescents that start drinking without alcohol-using friends subsequently seek out drinking peers) effects consistently report significant peer influence effects. However, studies are unable to elucidate the relative contribution and developmental sequence of peer influence and selection. Existing research is synthesised to model the developmental influence of peer processes on adolescent alcohol use. Future research directions are recommended to inform better designed investigations that can lead to more effective endeavours to address peer processes in prevention efforts.

Developing and Validating a New Classroom Climate Observation Assessment Tool

The climate of school classrooms, shaped by a combination of teacher practices and peer processes, is an important determinant for children's psychosocial functioning and is a primary factor affecting bullying and victimization. Given that there are relatively few theoretically grounded and validated assessment tools designed to measure the social climate of classrooms, our research team developed an observation tool through participatory action research (PAR). This article details how the assessment tool was designed and preliminarily validated in 18 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classrooms in a large urban public school district. The goals of this study are to illustrate the feasibility of a PAR paradigm in measurement development, ascertain the psychometric properties of the assessment tool, and determine associations with different indices of classroom levels of relational and physical aggression.

TMPR-scheme for reliably broadcast messages among peer processes

Nowadays information systems are being shifted to distributed architectures. The peer-to-peer (P2P) model as a fully distributed system, is composed of peer processes (peers). Here, peers have to efficiently and flexibly make an agreement on one common value which satisfies an agreement condition. In the agreement protocol, each peer has to deliver values to all the peers in a group. We take advantage of the multipoint relaying (MPR) mechanism to efficiently broadcast messages. Here, if a peer which forwards messages to other peers is faulty, the peers cannot receive messages. In this paper, we newly discuss a trustworthiness-based broadcast (TBB) algorithm where only the trustworthy peers forward messages. That is, untrustworthy peers, i.e., peers prone to faults and malicious behaviours do not forward messages. Here, the transmission fault implied by faulty peers can be reduced. We evaluate the TBB algorithm in terms of the number of messages compared with the pure flooding and MPR algorithms.

Personal Construct Peer Consultation: Caring for the Psychotherapists

The development of personal construct models of supervision has been following the research into the psychological well-being of psychotherapists. In response to these investigations a personal construct model for peer consultation groups was developed. Along with the model's basic assumptions, there is an account of the group processes taking place. The clinical implications generated by these processes of facilitation are provided, followed by an account of the peer consultation group, the history, aims, objectives, and processes. A measure was developed to evaluate the consultation process of the peer group. Examples of evaluative processes are presented. The usefulness of the model and the evaluation measure are discussed. Next, the clinical implications of personal construct peer group consultation are investigated along with the capacity of this model to “care” for group members.

Peer Processes and Gender Role Development: Changes in Gender Atypicality Related to Negative Peer Treatment and Children’s Friendships

Peer socialization has been proposed to elicit gender norm adherence through: a) rebuke for exhibiting gender nonnormative characteristics and b) engagement in same-sex interactions. However, there is little evidence supporting these assumptions. Accordingly, the current study examined the unique and interactive contributions of negative peer treatment and same-sex and cross-sex friendships to gender conformity over one school year. Children from the upper-Midwest of the USA (196 girls; 170 boys; Mage = 9.34 years) participated. Data included peer-ratings of harassment, friendship nominations, and teacher-ratings of gender atypicality. Peer harassment predicted decreased gender atypicality for children with many male friends and increased gender atypicality for boys with many female friends and few male friends. Implications for theories of gender development are discussed.

A Community-Based Approach to Preventing Youth Violence: What Can We Learn From the Playground?

Aggression, bullying, and victimization represent tremendous public health concerns among youth. These behaviors occur frequently in unstructured settings, such as the playground. Direct observations of the playground permit examination of these peer processes and are readily accomplished using community-based participatory research (CBPR). To present alternative viewpoints regarding the use of playground observations to evaluate peer aggression, bullying, and victimization. We used a (1) child-specific observational coding system and (2) naturalistic observation of the playground to examine playground behaviors. Peer-child processes have differential associations with conduct disorder (CD) and depression symptoms. Group-based observations suggested a number of strengths and some areas that would be amenable to intervention. A CBPR framework is useful for identifying youth involved in bullying and victimization; providing immediate support, interventions, and problem-solving strategies; and predicting potential negative outcomes, which can inform violence prevention and intervention efforts.

Such naches

This analysis of the papers in the special section on the intersection of identity development and peer relationship processes calls attention to conceptual contribution this collection of papers makes to the literature on identity development. Together these ten papers build on strong theoretical foundations in identity development, which posit close relationship contexts as central to the development of self-awareness and self-representation. The complex and innovative methodologies employed across these studies allow for the analysis of intersecting and interacting influence of multiple relationship types, and facilitate the analysis of culture and gender as they relate to identity development and peer processes. Together, these papers make a powerful contribution to the current literature and provide a foundation for future research.

Anxious solitude/withdrawal and anxiety disorders: Conceptualization, co-occurrence, and peer processes leading toward and away from disorder in childhood

This chapter contains (1) an analysis of commonalities and differences in anxious solitude and social anxiety disorder, and a review of empirical investigations examining (2) correspondence among childhood anxious solitude and anxiety and mood diagnoses and (3) the relation between peer difficulties and temporal stability of anxious solitude and depressive symptoms. Findings support a diathesis-stress model in which anxious solitude forecasts symptoms of psychopathology primarily in the context of interpersonal stress. Additionally, evidence for individual and environmental factors which moderate risk for peer difficulties among anxious solitary children is reviewed. Implications for intervention are discussed.

Young People's Perspectives on Creating a “Participation-Friendly” Culture

Youth-serving organizations are increasingly interested in the participation of youth as partners in addressing issues relevant to young people. This paper adds new insights by sharing young people's perspectives on how to enhance youth participation in organizational settings. We conducted in-depth focus group interviews with 31 young people and seven adults from six youth development programs in California where youth collaborate with adults to take on leadership and decision-making roles. Findings suggest that organizations need to incorporate peer processes into their change strategies, discuss the role of relationships in the program and organizational sphere, and embrace mutual learning and meaningful community impact.

A broadcast type Hierarchical Group communication protocol

A large number of peer processes are cooperating by exchanging messages in autonomic, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems. In this paper, we discuss a Hierarchical Group (HG) protocol aimed at reducing communication and computation overheads for a large number of processes. A HG is composed of disjointed subgroups. Each subgroup has gateway processes which communicate with other subgroups. Even if messages are locally causally ordered in a subgroup, the messages may not be globally causally ordered in a group. We discuss how to globally causally order messages by using local synchronisation mechanisms of subgroups. In addition, we present an evaluation of the protocol.

The relation between women's body esteem and friendships with gay men

Women who associate with gay men are often portrayed as physically unattractive and lacking in both self-confidence and attention from straight men. However, many women report enhanced self-esteem and feelings of attractiveness as a result of attention from their gay friends. It is well established that body esteem can be negatively impacted by certain peer processes, yet there is a dearth of quantitative research on positive peer influences on women's body esteem. We tested two hypotheses: (a) women with gay male friends have poor body esteem and are rejected by heterosexual men, and (b) more contact with gay men is positively related to body esteem. Participants were 154 heterosexual women, who completed measures of their friendships with gay men, straight men and women, body esteem, relationship involvement and break-ups. Results supported the hypothesis that women's body esteem, specifically feelings of sexual attractiveness, is positively associated with friendships with gay men.

Global-to-Local Approach to Rigorously Developing Distributed System with Exception Handling

Cooperative distributed system covers a wide range of applications such as the systems for industrial controlling and business-to-business trading, which are usually safety-critical. Coordinated exception handling (CEH) refers to exception handling in the cooperative distributed systems, where exceptions raised on a peer should be dealt with by all relevant peers in a consistent manner. Some CEH algorithms have been proposed. A crucial problem in using these algorithms is how to develop the peers which are guaranteed coherent in both normal execution and exceptional execution. Straightforward testing or model checking is very expensive. In this paper, we propose an effective way to rigorously develop the systems with correct CEH behavior. Firstly, we formalize the CEH algorithm by proposing a Peer Process Language to precisely describe the distributed systems and their operational semantics. Then we dig out a set of syntactic conditions, and prove its sufficiency for system coherence. Finally, we propose a global-to-local approach, including a language describing the distributed systems from a global perspective and a projection algorithm, for developing the systems. Given a well-formed global description, a set of peers can be generated automatically. We prove the system composed of these peers satisfies the conditions, that is, it is always coherent and correct for CEH.

The Role of Social Influence in the Prevention of Disordered Eating Among Girls

The prevalence of body dissatisfaction among young girls is remarkably high. Peer processes play an important role in shaping its development. The present study examined the role of peer influence in shaping girls' eating behaviours following participation in a peer support prevention program. A total of 206 girls (M age = 12.5, SD = .54) completed assessments of social pressure, body esteem, global self-esteem and restrictive dieting before and after their participation in a 12-week school-based peer support group program. Participation was associated with overall decreases in problem eating behaviours, but the program appeared most beneficial for those who experienced the highest levels of social pressure at admission to the program. Girls with higher body mass index tended to show a decrease in reports of pressure from peer modelling after participating in the intervention. Decreases in all forms of social pressure reported by girls following the program were associated with improvements in their body esteem.

A PROTOCOL FOR MAKING AN AGREEMENT IN A PEER-TO-PEER (P2P) SOCIETY

There are many discussions on agreement protocols of multiple peer processes (peers) where every peer just aims at agreeing on one value out of values shown by the peers. In meetings of human societies, agreement procedures are so flexible that persons can change their opinions and can use not only all-condition where every person agrees on one value but also various types of agreement conditions like majority-condition. In this paper, we discuss a flexible agreement protocol of multiple peers by taking into account human behaviors in social agreement procedures. Each peer first takes a value v1 and notifies the other peers of the value v1. A peer pi in turn receives values from other peers. Unless a set of the values from all the peers satisfy the agreement condition, the peer pi can take another value v2. In order to model the social human behavior, in our previous work we discussed E - and P -precedent relations [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] on values of a peer pi. The relations [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] show that a peer pi can take a value v2 after taking a value v1 and prefers v1 to v2, respectively. If a peer autonomously takes values based on its precedent relations, the peers might not make an agreement even if there exists a satisfiable set of previous values. We discuss what previous values the peer can take again. In this paper, we try to find a satisfiable set of previous values in a history of values which the peers have so far taken, in addition for each peer to taking a new value at each round.

A distributed coordination protocol in an order-heterogeneous group

In Peer-to-Peer (P2P) overlay networks, a group of multiple peer processes are required to cooperate to make a global decision. Each process takes a value and exchanges values with the other proces...

A distributed coordination protocol in an order-heterogeneous group

In Peer-to-Peer (P2P) overlay networks, a group of multiple peer processes are required to cooperate to make a global decision. Each process takes a value and exchanges values with the other processes until the agreement condition is satisfied. We define existentially and preferentially precedent relations which show what values a process can take after taking a value and which value a process prefers to another value, respectively. Based on the precedent relations, each process takes the most preferable value in the values which are changeable from current value, at each round. We discuss a coordination protocol among multiple values in a type of heterogeneous system, where some pair of processes has different precedent relations on the same domain. A process learns the precedent relations of another process through exchanging values. A process takes a value that other processes can take by using the knowledge on the other processes.

Development and preliminary validation of a measure for assessing staff perspectives on the quality of clinical group supervision

In the UK clinical supervision is regarded as an essential process supporting quality improvement within the clinical governance framework, and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists regards it as a tool for promoting critical reflective practice. There is limited evidence of the impact on practice or improvements in healthcare quality, and the need for an evaluation instrument specifically tailored to group supervision. To develop a measure for assessing staff perspectives on the quality of clinical group supervision and its impact on the quality of care. A self-completion questionnaire was devised to measure staff perceptions of purpose, process and impact of clinical group supervision. Items were developed through an inductive process of consultation, peer and literature review. The questionnaire's content validity was assessed. The questionnaire was then administered to 57 subjects who had received approximately 1 year of clinical supervision to evaluate acceptability, factor structure and convergent validity. Response rates were 91% (52/57). Principal component factor analysis suggested a three-factor structure, the first three factors accounting for 72.4% of the total variance. Items loaded appropriately onto purpose, process and impact. These three dimensions were positively and moderately correlated. Internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.86) indicated that the 14 items could be regarded as a scale. The overall CSEQ score was positively correlated with a single question assessing 'general opinion' about the CS program (Spearman's rho = 0.79, p < 0.001) giving evidence for convergent validity. The questionnaire is concise, easy to complete and simple to analyse, and appears to be a reliable and valid measure of staff perceptions of quality of clinical group supervision. Further studies with larger sample sizes and including other groups of health professionals are needed to confirm the validity and reliability of the CSEQ.

Peer Deviancy Training and Peer Coercion: Dual Processes Associated With Early‐Onset Conduct Problems

The prospective relationships of conduct problems and peer coercion and deviancy training during kindergarten (mean age = 5.3 years) to overt and covert conduct problems in third-fourth grade were examined in a sample of 267 boys and girls. Coercion and deviancy training were distinct peer processes. Both were associated with earlier child conduct problems but were differentially associated with child impulsivity, verbal ability, anxiety, peer rejection, and deviant peer affiliation. Coercion by peers predicted overt conduct problems and peer deviancy training and the interaction of deviancy training and coercion predicted covert conduct problems in third-fourth grade. Peer deviancy training occurs in early childhood and may serve as an independent risk mechanism in addition to peer coercion for early-onset, persisting conduct problems.

Special Issue - Papers from JAST Tribology Conference, Tokyo, May 2008

The JAST Tribology Conference, Tokyo, May 2008 was held at Tokyo from Monday May 12th to Wednesday May 14th, 2008.A total of 156 presentations were made with five parallel sessions, and a total of 580 participants took part in the conference. At every Tribology Conference, JAST publishes a bound volume of proceedings, which includes extended abstracts of all the papers presented. Since the pages are limited to two pages for each paper and most of them are written in Japanese, the authors were requested to submit their paper to the JAST's official international journal “Tribology Online.”The papers submitted to the Tribology Online have subsequently undergone the normal peer review process by multiple reviewers. In this special issue, thirteen papers are published following the decision of authors themselves either not to submit their papers and the process of peer review.The Editorial Committee wishes to express their appreciation to all the authors who submitted their papers to this International Journal. As the Editor-in-Chief, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Associate Editors, the Reviewers, and the Publication Coordinators for their effort to complete the peer-review processes and the publication work under the tight schedule.