Sex differences in the structure and stability of children’s playground social networks and their overlap with friendship relations

Sex differences in social networks

1983) when playground activities change from the playing of games to socialising and hanging
around (Blatchford, 1998).

Social Network structure

Findings in relation to social network structure are only suggestive because of the limited
data available. Contrary to the notion that boys spread themselves thinly across many members, all
boys’ networks contained a core of a few boys who spent a lot of time together which was then
extended into larger networks with the addition of members at the cluster and group levels.
Consistent with expectations was the observation that female social network members tended to
spend relatively equivalent amounts of time together suggesting that they may value loyalty and be
intolerant of the fluidity that was typical of the boys’ large networks. This may function to enhance
intimacy within girls’ networks. The existence of networks of weakly associated girls was
unexpected. It would be surprising if girls within these loosely formed networks engage in intimate
activities but these may be instances of new developing networks rather than established ones.
Future research could examine the emergent internal structure of a larger number of networks to
determine whether observed differences in structure explain the different values attributed to boys
and girls networks.

Overlap between Social Networks and Friendship Relations

Results on social network and friendship overlap were consistent with predictions in that
there was a greater overlap in the proportion of network members that were friends or best friends
for girls than boys. An interesting and unexpected finding was that girl’s networks tended to consist
of a sub-set of friends and best friends. Boys’ networks, by contrast, contain virtually all best friends
and friends as well as others that are not friends, though may be friends of friends.

These network contexts afford girls more opportunities for explicit intimacy, but also
suggest that girls may be intimate with only a subset of their friends, since they do not spend much

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