Learning hope and optimism: classmate experiences and adolescent development

ABSTRACT

This article explores individual and contextual factors related to the development of hopeful attitudes during adolescence using a nationally representative study. A key focus is on the experiences of mistreatment by adults, both for the adolescent and his/her classmates. While all types of individual experiences with mistreatment reduce adolescent hopefulness, mistreatment domains most likely to be visible (i.e. physical abuse) by classmates also reduce adolescent hopefulness. This relationship is robust to the inclusion of more general environmental factors through school-level fixed effects, suggesting both a causal explanation and a typically unmeasured spillover effect of violence against children. Other types of mistreatment, such as neglect and material hardship, do not show spillover effects.

KEYWORDS:

• Hope
• peer effects
• non-cognitive skills

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I20
• J24

Acknowledgements

This project was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. This research uses data from Add Health, a programme project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. This work was also supported by core grants to the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (P2C HD047873) and to the Center for Demography of Health and Aging at the University of Wisconsin– Madison (P30 AG017266.