Behavioral Residential Treatment, Vol. 7, No. 1, 45-53 (1992)

PREDICTORS OF PEER HELPFULNESS: IMPLICATIONS FOR YOUTH IN RESIDENTIAL TREATMENT

James Vincent, Daniel Houlihan and Patricia Mitchell Psychology Department, Box 35-Armstrong Hall, Mankato State University, Mankato, MN

56002-8400, USA

Sociometric measures were used to predict peer helpfulness of youth in a residential treatment center. Seventeen female adolescents with conduct disorders were asked to choose three peers in their group who were most popular, similar, well-liked, and competent. These sociometric measures were correlated with the frequency in which each peer was nominated as most and least helpful in several problem scenarios representing actual situations encountered in residential settings. A multiple linear regression analysis indicated that “popularity” was the best predictor of peer helpfulness across the problem scenarios. Discussion focused on the impact of popularity on treatment strategies for youth in residential placement.

Peer mediated interventions have been effective in treating a variety of prob- lems including social withdrawal (Ragland, Keer, & Strain, 1981; Saintato, Maheady, & Shook, 1986; Strain, 1977; Strain, 1981; Strain, Shores, & Timm, 1977), disruptive classroom behaviors (Carden-Smith & Fowler, 1984; Fowler, Dougherty, Kirby, & Kohler, 1986; Ringer, 1973), and improving the social skills of students with severe handicaps (Blew, Schwartz, & Luce, 1985; Donder & Nietupski, 198 1; Drabman & Spitalnik, 1973; Hendrickson, Strain, Tremblay, & Shores, 1982; Lancioni, 1982; Sasso, Houghes, Swanson, & Novak, 1987; Sisson, Van Hasselt, Hersen, & Strain, 1985; Strain, Kerr, & Ragland, 1979).

A number of studies have found that using “high status” peers can enhance treatment effects with peer mediated interventions. For example, Sasso and Rude (1987) found that popular peers were more influential in producing higher rates of initiations towards students with handicaps than were “low status” peers. Solomon and Wahler (1973) demonstrated the utility of using popular peers to reinforce appropriate behaviors in the classroom. Students with high social reinforcement value have also been used effectively to increase attendance

James Vincent is currently in the doctoral program in the School of Psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Daniel Houlihan, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at Mankato State University, Mankato, MN. Patricia Mitchell is the director of the Forest Ridge Community Youth Center, Estherville, IA.

00845581/92/010045-09$05.00 0 1992 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

46 James Vincent et al.

in elementary and high schools (Noonan & Thibeault, 1974). These studies demonstrate the importance of selecting the most potent behavior change agents prior to program implementation.

Several sociometric measures have been developed for the purpose of selecting the most effective peer mediators. For example, Gresham (1981) used peer nomi- nations in which students responded to three requests: (a) list three people in your class who are your best friends; (b) list three people in your class that really like you; and (c) list three people in your class that you would like to play with best. Agard, Veldman, Kaufman, and Semmel (1978) developed a sociometric measure appropriate for younger students. This measure asks students to rate their peers by marking one of four faces including (a) a smiling face (labeled “friend”), (b) a straight line face (labeled “ok”), (c) a frowning face (labeled “don’t like”), and (d) a question mark (labelled “don’t know”). Vorrath and Bendtro (1985) used peer nominations for the formation of leader- ship groups in high schools. During this selection process, students nominated three peers who are most likely to meet the following criteria: (A) those whom they would go to if they had a concern; (b) those whom they would most likely listen to; and (c) those whom they could trust.

There have been a number of studies demonstrating the effectiveness of peer mediated interventions for youth in residential treatment settings (McCarty, Griffin, Apolloni, & Shores, 1977; Phillips, Phillips, Wolf, & Fixsen, 1973). Unfortunately these authors have given little attention to the selection and characteristics of the peer helpers. It is likely that such consideration would enhance treatment outcomes for youth in these settings. The purpose of the current study is to use sociometric measures to identify factors that predict the degree to which youth are perceived as helpful by their peers within a residential treatment setting. The variables under consideration include both popularity ratings and the degree to which peers are liked. In addition, Schunk (1987) has suggested that two other variables, peer similarity and competence, may influence peer mediation under some circumstances. Each of these socio- metric ratings will be correlated with the frequency in which peers are nominated as being most and least helpful across four problem scenarios.

METHOD Subjects

Participants in the study included 17 female adolescents ages 13 to 17 years who were placed into a long-term residential treatment center. The average age of the participants was 15 years. The average length of placement for the

Peer helpfulness 47

youth was 6 months with a range of 1-1 1 months. All of the adolescents met the minimal criteria for conduct disorder as defined by the DSM 111-R including behaviors such as running away, breaking curfew, stealing, lying, and fighting.

Setting Data were collected at a residential treatment facility located in the midwest.

The facility included 3 units each serving 15 female adolescents. The facility provided 24-h supervision and had a 1 5 staff to client ratio during primary hours. The primary treatment approach was based on Positive Peer Culture which utilizes peer pressure to promote positive behavior change (Vorrath & Brendtro, 1985).

Procedure Sociometric measures

The sociometric measures were obtained on day one of data collection. Each participant was asked to choose the three peers in her group ( N = 15) whom she judged to be most popular, most similar to herself, and whom she likes the most. Sociometric measures of competence were obtained by asking each youth to choose the three peers she judged to have made the most progress in their treatment program. The dependent measures included the frequency in which each peer from the three treatment groups ( N = 45) was nominated as popular, similar, liked, and making the most treatment progress.

Problem scenarios On day two of data collection, the participants were asked to respond to

each of the following problem scenarios by nominating the three peers in their group who would be most and least helpful in achieving specific positive out- comes.

Problem 1: You are angry about losing your weekend privileges. Outcome: Become less angry.

Problem 2: You had an argument with a teacher at school and you are afraid to go back to class. Outcome: Return to class and talk to the teacher.

Problem 3: You are having problems making friends at school. Outcome: Make friends.

Problem 4: You are thinking about running away. Outcome: Not run away.

48 James Vincent et al.

RESULTS

Table 1 presents the intercorrelations between sociometric measures of popular- ity, similarity, likability, and competence and the combined frequency in which peers are nominated as being most and least helpful across the four problem scenarios. The frequency of being nominated as being most helpful was positively

TABLE 1. Intercorrelations between the frequency of peers nominated as most and least helpful and sociometric measures of popularity, similarity, likability and competence.

Most Least helpful helpful Pop Sim Like Comp

Most

Least helpful -

helpful -0.53** -

POP 0.87** -0.46** - Sim 0.61** -0.27 0.50** -

Like 0.68** -0.45** 0.71** 0.58** - Comp 0.78** -0.53** 0.70** 0.47** 0.52** -

* p < 0.05; **p < 0.01,

correlated with all four sociometric measures including popularity ( u = 0.87, p < 0.01), similarity ( r = 0.61, p < O.Ol) , likability (Y = 0.68, p < 0.01), and competence ( r = 0.78, p < 0.01). The frequency of being nominated as least helpful was inversely correlated with popularity ( r = -0.46, p < O.Ol), likability ( r = 0.45, p < 0.01), and competence (Y = 0.53, p < 0.01). Table 1 also shows the frequency of most helpful nominations was inversely correlated with peer nominations of least helpful (Y = -0.53, p < 0.01) and there was significant overlap between popularity, similarity, likability, and competence measures.

A multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to determine which of the four variables best predicted nominations of most and least helpful. Table 2 shows that popularity, similarity, likability, and competence accounted for a significant proportion of variability with most helpful peer nominations, F (4, 35) = 46.31, p < 0.01. Within this equation, popularity was found to be the best predictor accounting for approximately 30% of the variability, p < 0.01. This was followed by competence which accounted for approximately 9% of the variability (p < 0.01) and similarity which accounted for about 3% of the variability (p < 0.05). Likability did not account for a significant propor- tion of the variability within this equation.

Peer helpfulness 49

TABLE 2. Summary of multiple regression analysis predicting peer nominations for most helpful.

Independent Regression variable coeficien t Beta P Adjusted R2

Popularity 1.9243 0.5538 0.0000 0.8229 Similarity 0.9987 0.1726 0.0500 Competence 1.0992 0.2829 0.0049 Likability 0.1861 0.0405 0.6979 Total equation F(4, 35) = 4 6 . 3 1 , ~ < 0.0000

Independent regression analyses for each problem scenario found that popu- larity was the best predictor of peer helpfulness for three out of the four con- ditions. The only exception was with problem 4 (runaway) in which peer competence accounted for the majority of variability (26%, p < 0.01) followed by popularity (17%,p < 0.01).

Table 3 shows the results of a multiple regression analysis using peer nomi- nations of least helpful as the dependent variable and the four sociometric

TABLE 3. Summary of multiple regression analysis predicting peer nominations for least helpful.

Independent Regression variable coeficient Beta P Adjusted R2

Popularity -0.0567 - 0.0 186 0.9380 0.2488 Similarity 0.4530 0.0986 0.6121 Competence - 1.3786 -0.4153 0.0436

Total equation Likability -0.0923 0.2722 0.2102

F(4, 35) = 4 . 2 3 , ~ < 0.0067

measures as the independent variables. This equation accounted for a significant proportion of variability with least helpful nominations, F(4, 35) = 4.23, p < 0.01. Within this equation, peer competence was the only significant predictor accounting for approximately 17% of the variability (p < 0.05). Separate regres- sion analyses indicated that competence was the best predictor of least helpful nominations for all four problem scenarios.

DISCUSSION

The results of this study showed that sociometric measures of popularity were better predictors of peer helpfulness than were similarity, likability, and competence across a variety of problem situations. The exception to this trend was preventing a problem behavior (i.e., running away). Within this condition,

50 James Vincent et al.

peer competence was the most significant predictor of perceived helpfulness. It may be that popularity will have the greatest impact with situations that are social in nature (i.e., making friends). An additional observation is that the youth used different criterion when making “least helpful” peer nominations. Those who were perceived as less competent by way of treatment progress were most likely to be nominated as being least helpful across the four problem scenarios.

These results support the growing body of evidence implicating “popularity” as a major determinant of the quality of adolescent peer relationships and overall mental health. For example, Patterson (1986) found that early peer rejection was related to the development of antisocial behaviors with adolescent boys. Logon, Barnhart, and Gossett (1982) compared the importance of staff v. peer relationships in the maintenance of treatment gains for adolescents released from a psychiatric hospital. Results indicated that popularity with peers was a better predictor of long-term success than the quality of staff relationships. Other researchers have found popularity to be related to self-esteem (Walker & Greene, 1986), depression (Reinherz, Stewart-Berghauer, Pakiz, & Frost, 1989), acceptance of peers with handicaps (Cowardin, 1986), happiness (Feingold, 1985), and alienation (Mohanty, 1984).

Much of this research has suggested that popularity is related more to specific social skills (Adams, 1983; Clark & Ayers, 1988; Elliot & Gresham, 1989) than on impermeable traits. For instance, Walia (1986) found no significant differ- ences in the personalities of popular, rejected, and neglected peers. In addition, Clark and Ayers (1988) found that those youth who reciprocated social interac- tions were perceived as more attractive and having higher status than those who did not reciprocate.

Several researchers have suggested that peer mediated interventions have a greater likelihood of producing generalization and maintenance of treatment outcomes (Kalfus, 1984; Carden-Smith & Fowler, 1984; Strain, Cooke, & Appol- loni, 1976). According to these authors, peer monitors can provide consequences more consistently and across a greater number of settings when compared to adults. In addition, the presence of a peer may provide a cue to engage in targeted behavior following the termination of an intervention. A final consider- ation is that the use of high status peers may produce what some researchers have defined as “spill over” (Sasso & Rude, 1977). Within this phenomenon, untrained peers may increase their interaction with an unpopular peer following multiple initiations from a highly regarded youth.

Future research may focus on the validation of peer mediated interventions for adolescents within treatment centers and school settings. By gaining access to the ecology of the adolescent, the clinician is more likely to exploit naturally

Peer helpfulness 51

reinforcing contingencies and have a pervasive impact on behavior. The primary focus of such interventions should be to increase specific social skills which will produce positive interactions with others. Although several educators have utilized “peer counseling” approaches in high schools (Blain & Brusko, 1985; Kuner, 1984; Schweisheimer & Walberg, 1976), the goals, methods, and out- comes of these programs are unclear. It is not surprising that such broadly defined programs have not had a major impact on the behavior of students. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of such peer programs, a rigorous scientific inquiry would be needed with special consideration given to the characteristics of the peer helper, the specific target behaviors being addressed, the standardiza- tion of treatment strategies, and the identification of circumstances in which peer facilitation will be most influential.

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