Social status and aggressive and disruptive behavior in girls: individual, group, and classroom influences.

Recent studies have found distinct subtypes of aggressive youth, marked by either high social status or social marginalization, and that various measures of status differentially associate with aggression. The majority of these studies, however, focused on boys, adolescents, and/or relational aggression in girls. The current research examined how the kind of status measured and the social ecology affect the association between overt aggression and social status in a sample of 187 3rd grade girls. Cluster analysis uncovered aggressive-popular, aggressive-unpopular, and prosocial-popular configurations. Although likeability was related solely to prosocial behavior, other measures of status co-occurred with both prosocial and aggressive behavior. Peer-group behavior complemented that of individuals, though peer-group and classroom acceptance of aggression were not related to cluster prevalence.

Peer groups, popularity, and social preference: trajectories of social functioning among students with and without learning disabilities.

The extant literature on the social functioning of students with learning disabilities (LD) has indicated that whereas a majority belong to peer groups, a higher proportion are isolated and most have lower social status among peers in general than their typically achieving classmates. Although some work has examined these issues over short-term longitudinal studies, none to date have examined them over extensive time periods. Toward this end, the current study examined a sample of 1,361 students (678 girls and 683 boys; 55 with LD) using multiple measures of peer social functioning assessed each semester from spring of third grade through fall of sixth grade. The results indicated that whereas students with LD were similar to their typically achieving peers in terms of group functioning and characteristics, they were viewed as lower in social standing among their classmates as a whole. These effects were maintained over time, indicating that long-term inclusion may not substantially affect peer social functioning among students with LD.