Children in classrooms: peer status, status distribution and mental well-being

Abstract

This study focuses on social relations in school classes and their importance for mental well-being in middle childhood in a Scottish city. The aspect of social relations under study is peer status and both the individual's own status position and the status distribution of the school class as a whole was considered. The number of children analysed was 13,932 and the number of school classes 524. The results show a clear association at individual level: the higher the status position the more uncommon is malaise. This is true both when malaise is reported by the teacher and by a parent, for both boys and girls and irrespective of the number of friends. The association was also generally present within school. It exists regardless of grade, type of school and class size. Furthermore, a minority of the classes had a more compressed status distribution and here malaise was less common in all status positions. This was especially the case when the school class did not contain marginalized children. Consequently, that some children are marginalized in the group indicates problematic conditions for the persons in question but also for the other group members.

Introduction

A ranking order in terms of social status is a common feature of human social life. This is also true for children. They experience a social order, in terms of status, in their daily environment and among persons of the same age. Furthermore, similar to what is the case for adults, there are differences in children's health by their social status. There are, for example, peer status differences in physical health, general well-being (Hansell, 1985) and adverse health-behaviour (Michell & Amos, 1997). Peer status in childhood is also related to mental health in young adulthood (Roff & Wirth, 1984).

The present study focuses on children and examines the significance of the status position in the school class for the child's mental well-being. Beside the individual's own social position, the structure of social relations in the school class as a whole constitutes a condition that can exert an influence on health. Therefore, apart from the child's own status position, the status distribution of the school class as a whole is evaluated as a possible determinant of children's mental well-being.

A school class can be seen as a combination of work group and peer group. It is constant over a long time and it is a setting in which children spend a great deal of time at an age when peer relations are important. At the same time, membership of the group is imposed. It is not possible to exclude others and there is little opportunity to change groups oneself. The group's existence over time is not a result of the group members being attracted to each other, and for some children formal membership of the group can coexist with informal exclusion. The social interplay that takes place inside the school class can thus be regarded as a highly important life situation for the individual child.

An informal structure of social relations is built up within the school class. One aspect of this structure is peer status, that is the individual's status among his or her classmates in a certain respect, e.g. as someone who is liked by other children. Peer status is usually elicited by getting all the children anonymously to say which of the other children in the class they like best. When all choices are put together the results tends to show a hierarchisation, where some children are more liked than others. Peer status usually demonstrates a positively skewed distribution (see, for example, Moreno, 1953; Stütz, 1985). A few individuals are very popular, most are liked by some classmates, while a number of children are not chosen by anyone at all. Thus, peer status refers to a ranking of positions, where the individual's position is that assigned to him or her by the rest of the class.

This hierarchical dimension is a reality for pupils in everyday life. It has been shown that they describe their peer group structure as hierarchical and can recognise and label peers in terms of status and popularity (see Michell & Amos, 1997). Björk (1995) maintains that there is a floating social order within a school class where the question of rank demands repeated confirmation. She also means that it is difficult for a child not to participate in the activities determining this social order since participation is vital for the individual's own possibility to become integrated in the group.

The child's status vis à vis his or her classmates can have far-reaching effects, including on his or her mental well-being. Mead (1934), who formulated fundamental theses about the importance of social relations, maintained that the individual's experience of himself is in part shaped by the attitudes and reactions he encounters from the members of the groups to which he belongs. It is also shaped by the attitudes of the group as a whole. The attitudes enter the individual's experience and become attitudes he adopts toward himself. They should thus be of importance for the individual's self-image. Peer status indicates important conditions for the child, such as being accepted, appreciated, preferred and respected. Popular children have also been shown to have greater self-confidence (Coleman, 1961). The individual's self-esteem and self-confidence are closely connected to his or her mental well-being.

Position in the group hierarchy is also related to other aspects of social relations that are believed to be vital for mental health and well-being. One of these aspects is social support (see Berkman, Glass, Brissette, & Seeman, 2000; Due, Holstein, Lund, Modvig, & Avlund, 1999; House, Kahn, McLeod, & Williams, 1985). Peer status has been shown to co-vary with the number of friends (Hansell, 1985; Vandell & Hembree, 1994), including friends outside school (Ray, Cohen, & Secrist, 1995), which indicates higher levels of social support in higher status positions. Another aspect is social integration. Being chosen by many classmates can indicate that an individual is an integrated member of the school class. Not being chosen by anyone at all, on the other hand, can be taken to reflect isolation and, consequently, a lack of social support. Social support and social integration are believed to have a positive effect on mental (and physical) health, partly because they promote better self-esteem and self-confidence. They are also supposed to protect against the negative health effects of events or situations that are stressful (Antonovsky, 1987; Cohen & Syme, 1985). It should be added here that a lack of social relations is in itself usually regarded as a source of stress.

Status positions, especially those at the top and at the bottom of the ranking, are linked to certain role expectations. For instance, children with low status are not supposed to inform or influence other children much. Children with high status, on the other hand, communicate more with others, are given more information and have more opportunity to influence other members and relations inside the group (Israel, 1963). These types of resources, as well as social support, can be used for problem management and hence neutralise or modify effects of stress on mental health.

Also, when the interest concerns the health of individuals it is important to view the group as a whole. It is through the group that the status distribution is developed and become connected with self-esteem, resources, and social roles. Furthermore, groups differ in which type of social role that is linked to a certain position, for instance, in which behaviours that are seen as desirable in a high status position (Lundqvist & Walch, 1989; Boivin, Dodge, & Coie, 1995).

Group characteristics can also determine the very shape of the peer status distribution, i.e. which positions that are created and hence possible to attain in the group. A widely spread status distribution in a school class, that is great status differences between pupils, might indicate that social life to a higher degree circulates around issues of popularity and status; that status to a higher degree serves as a guiding principle for interaction and is an important and perhaps intentional consequence of this interaction. Of special interest is when such a distribution contains positions of marginalized children or outsiders. It can be seen as an indication that the school class does not function at its best. The existence of very low status positions can imply a lower tolerance for individual variations, a greater pressure for conformity in line with group norms or that the group has a need of someone at the bottom of a pecking order. Even though most children with low status are not bullied, it is a typical condition for those who are bullied to be located at the bottom of the peer status order (Schuster, 1999). The existence of a marginalized position can also pose a threat for those fearing to end up in this position. In this way the existence of a very low status position can indicate circumstances that are not beneficial for any child in the school class, irrespective of his or her own status position.

There are good reasons for studying children's peer status as a condition influencing their mental well-being. When an association exists, however, it can also be a consequence of mental well-being influencing status position. In the line of research, which is interested in why certain individuals end up where they do in a group structure, children's mental health and related symptoms, such as deviant behaviour, is seen as important determinants for peer status. When psychiatric disorder in children is the issue, not only behaviour but also poor peer relations per se have been regarded as indicators of disorder (see, for instance, Rutter, 1967). The behaviours most commonly focused on are aggression and social withdrawal. Such behaviours have been shown to influence peer status (see, for instance, Erhardt & Hinshaw, 1994; Newcomb, Bukowski, & Pattee, 1993). It has also been noted, however, that children's recognition and evaluation of these behaviours in other children depends on the reputation and peer status of the child in question (Hymel, 1986; Younger, Schneider, & Daniels, 1991). It also depends on the group norms regarding these behaviours (Boivin et al., 1995) and it has been suggested that peer status and behaviours are reciprocally related (Boivin & Hymel, 1997; Pettit, Clawson, Dodge, & Bates, 1996).

It is also important to note that many other factors, apart from mental health symptoms, are correlated with, and may influence, the individuals peer status. Such factors are school results, amount of socially active leisure time, interest in physical activities (Stütz, 1985), physical attractiveness, birth position, family adjustment, social class and ethnicity (see Miller & Gentry, 1980). Some methods used by children to achieve high status in clique hierarchies have been identified: for girls, friendship with other girls who are popular (Eder, 1985) and, for boys, athletic skills and physical strength (Kless, 1992). In contrast to a focus on the individual, it has been emphasised that group characteristics are of vital importance. It is not only enough to look at personal characteristics if one wants to understand why an individual ends up in a particular position in the group hierarchy (Boivin et al., 1995). The group itself has needs as an entity and it can choose, for example, to make a “troublemaker” its scapegoat or its leader (Lundqvist & Walch, 1989).

The most plausible basic assumption seems to be that mental well-being is important for peer status and vice versa and that social relations and mental well-being can be connected because they influence each other mutually and are part of a dynamic process evolving over time.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the relationship between children's peer status in the school class and mental well-being, with the latter being indicated by various signs of malaise reported by the teacher. The children under study lived in the city of Aberdeen in Scotland in 1964 and were 8–13 years of age at the time. The material used is extensive and includes more than 500 school classes. It therefore offers an unusually good opportunity to compare groups of children.

This study deals with malaise, which means, for instance, being worried, miserable or distressed. Malaise is usually not an indication of severe mental health problems. Furthermore, malaise is here seen as a response to the situational context and can therefore change with it. The basic assumptions of this study, which have been outlined above, are shown in Fig. 1. It summarizes the earlier discussion of the ways in which the individual's peer status, and the status distribution of the school class as a whole, can influence individual well-being. It also illustrates that the relationship between peer status and mental well-being is reciprocal, and thus, in part, depends on the former influencing the latter. This is the path of influence focused on here. It would have been preferable to study the phenomenon as a dialectical process but such an analysis would require a data material with repeated information on both peer status and mental well-being for every child. Such information was not available here.

The initial study question concerns the association's existence. First, what is the association between peer status and malaise in school? Does it exist for both boys and girls? From the theoretical model an increased occurrence of malaise is expected with decreasing peer status. The association should also exist irrespective of gender.

Some further questions are then posed in order to establish whether or not the association is spurious as well as to gain increased understanding about how the association works. Second, it is important to rule out the possibility of the results being due to the measure of malaise used and the fact that it is teachers who are informants. For a sub-sample of the population information on children's health has been gathered from a parent. This information was collected at a later time-point than the information on peer status. If peer status is an important aspect of children's lives its consequences should, to some degree, be visible for another observer, outside school and at a later point in time. Thus, is there an association between peer status and malaise when the information on malaise is collected from a parent? Third, is the association between peer status and malaise primarily due to the fact that persons with high status also tend to have more friends? Since the likelihood of having friends increases with peer status it is possible that social support through friendship is the working mechanism. Fourth, if peer status and malaise are causally and closely linked, the association should be generally present in school. How common is the association between peer status and malaise in school? Does the association exist in different grades? Can it be found in different types of school and in school classes of different size?

Finally, at group level, the peer status distribution can indicate conditions that are of importance for mental well-being. School classes tend to have both children who are marginalized and children who are leaders or favourites. Here, I will look for exceptions to this rule. Are there school classes in which there are no marginalized children and/or no favourites? If such exceptions do exist, they can be used to address an additional question: apart from the child's own status position, does the distribution of peer status in the group as a whole indicate classroom relations of significance for mental well-being? One might imagine, for example, that a school class without marginalized children would have interaction patterns that are beneficial for all children, irrespective of their own status in the school class.