Abstract
Friendship may be significantly associated with adolescents’ psychological well-being. Among various kinds of friendships, this study investigated two types of intergroup friendships among Chinese adolescents, specifically cross-hukou-location and cross-gender friendship. Fixed-effects modeling with a two-wave national dataset—the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS)—was performed to evaluate the relationship between within-individual changes in cross-hukou-location friendship, cross-gender friendship, and mental health status (N = 5,297, boys: 50.18%, average age: 12.92 at wave 1). The relationship pattern among different genders was also explored. The results showed that cross-hukou-location friendship is positively associated with male adolescents’ mental health status. The cross-gender relationship is negatively related to mental health in the overall sample and female subsample. The findings not only emphasized the vital role of intergroup contact but also shed light on understanding the role of gender in intergroup friendship-making and the relationship with psychological well-being.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 123-147 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Journal | Youth and Society |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 2022 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors thank the public dataset—China Education Panel Survey (CEPS; https://ceps.ruc.edu.cn), designed by National Survey Research Center, Renmin University of China. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.
Keywords
- best friends
- cross-gender
- cross-hukou-location
- gender difference
- mental health
