Friendship ties and exclusionary ties in classroom: the social structure among eight years old children

Friendship and peer acceptance contribute uniquely to positive social and emotional adjustment whereas low status within the peer group has been found to produce rejection, loneliness and harassment. We have studied how the exclusionary ties and friendship ties are distributed among first grade pupils in the classroom. The basic question was whether girls’ and boys’ networks are different from each other in regards to the density and centrality of the ties. Further, the size of the class and the effect of the level of multicultural heterogeneity to the tie distribution were studied. All analyses were made at class level. Surprisingly, no remarkable differences were found. The size of the class was found as an important factor influencing on the amount of exclusionary ties. The multicultural heterogeneity did not either have big influence on the composition of different types of social ties. The sample is large (738 children, 50 school classes) and therefore, the results can be generalized to similar cultural environments.