To Be Bicultural Is to Be Friends? Associating Early Adolescents' Cultural Identities and Behaviors With Friendship Networks in Minority‐Only Schools

Jessie Hillekens et al.

Journal of Community Psychology2026https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.70081article
AJG 2
Weight
0.41

What the paper says

Many ethnic minoritized adolescents attend minority-only schools with no ethnic majoritized classmates, but we know little about their acculturation and friendships in such settings. This study examined how early adolescents' heritage and mainstream cultural identities and behaviors associated with friendship ties in minority-only class networks. Early adolescents (N = 146, Mage = 11.24, 54.4% boys) in minority-only primary schools reported their heritage and mainstream cultural identities and behaviors and completed a sociometric measure of their friendship networks. Exponential Random Graph Models revealed that stronger heritage cultural identities and behaviors were associated with more friendships in class. Whereas mainstream cultural behaviors were linked to more friendships, stronger mainstream cultural identities were associated with fewer friendships, however. Early adolescents' cultural orientations were linked to friendship ties in minority-only classes, yet associations differed between cultural identities and behaviors. Our findings highlight the need for a more nuanced approach of acculturation in early adolescence.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.70081

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@article{jessie2026,
  title        = {{To Be Bicultural Is to Be Friends? Associating Early Adolescents' Cultural Identities and Behaviors With Friendship Networks in Minority‐Only Schools}},
  author       = {Jessie Hillekens et al.},
  journal      = {Journal of Community Psychology},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.70081},
}

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To Be Bicultural Is to Be Friends? Associating Early Adolescents' Cultural Identities and Behaviors With Friendship Networks in Minority‐Only Schools

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Evidence weight

0.41

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.25 × 0.4 = 0.10
M · momentum0.55 × 0.15 = 0.08
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.