Peer Group Delinquency and Sexual Victimization: Does Popularity Matter?

Abstract

Though a large body of research has found that peer social network characteristics influence both offending and victimization, relatively little is known about the influence of social network characteristics on adolescent sexual victimization. Attractiveness and sociability largely indicate popularity for teenage females, which in turn leads to earlier onset of dating, greater dating options, and potential risk of sexual victimization—an observation not tested in the criminological and criminal justice literature. We suggest and evaluate 2 competing hypotheses: that popularity within a network insulates females from sexual victimization and that popularity may increase exposure to delinquent others and facilitate sexual victimization. Results suggest that popularity does not have a consistent effect but instead that its role is conditioned by the deviance of the network. Popularity is associated with an increase in the likelihood of victimization when peer deviance is high but with a decrease when peer deviance is low. We further demonstrate that an interaction between a female's own drinking and the proportion of her friends that are male strongly affects her likelihood of sexual victimization. Implications for policy and future research are explored.

KEYWORDS:

• alcohol use
• gender homophily
• peer networks
• popularity
• sexual victimization

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to Natalie Dominguez for research assistance.

Notes

*p < .05.

Note: OR = odds ratio.

†p < .10, *p < .05.

Note: OR = odds ratio.

†p < .10, *p < .05.

As of January 20, 2013, Haynie's 2001 American Journal of Sociology article “Delinquent Peers Revisited: Does Network Structure Matter?” had been cited in the academic literature 480 times according to Google Scholar.

As the portion of respondents reporting victimization was small and just exceeded the level that would necessitate a correction to avoid biased standard errors, we replicated all analyses using King and Zeng's (1999, 2001) correction for rare events. No substantive differences were found between the rare-event models and those presented here.