Peer Exit and Adolescent Relations - Incite at Columbia University

With support from Incite, James Chu will investigate how the structure of adolescent friendship and homework-helping relationships changes in response to the departure of peers.

To do so, he will analyze an original dataset tracking the directed friendship and homework-helping nominations among a cohort of thousands of Chinese middle school students over three semesters and across hundreds of classes.

In addition, he will examine how these effects vary based on the circumstances of exit (e.g., the centrality of the departing member’s network position) and the corresponding consequences of peer exit for the academic achievement and mental health of those who remain.

Chu’s goal is to elucidate how various kinds of peer exit break down adolescent friendship and academic support networks, the circumstances where peer exit enables regeneration of these networks, and how these patterns of exit-induced breakdown and regeneration in peer group structure affect adolescent welfare.