The influence of friends on adolescents’ behavior problems at school: The role of ego, alter and dyadic characteristics

• Friends influence adolescents’ homework activities and attention behavior in class.
• Adolescents who receive less friendship nominations are influenced more.
• Friends who receive more friendship nominations are not more influential.
• Unreciprocated friends are not more influential than reciprocated friends.

This paper deals with the influence of friends in class on adolescents’ problematic school behavior (i.e. inattention in class and not doing homework). We examine whether this influence is moderated by ego (i.e. the adolescent's indegree), alter (i.e. friends’ indegree) and dyadic characteristics (i.e. friendship reciprocity). Influence processes are analyzed with a stochastic actor-based model (SIENA), while controlling for friendship selection. Using a 4-wave panel dataset, we find that friends influence adolescents’ problematic school behavior. Adolescents with a higher indegree are less likely to be influenced. The influence of friends is not significantly moderated by friends’ indegree and friendship reciprocity.