SoCS: Analyzing Partially Observable Computer-Adolescent Networks

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Peers are powerful socializing agents in the lives of adolescents, that is, youth between the ages of 11 to 17 years. Decades of sociological, psychological, and criminological literature have found that youth aggression (e.g., bullying, fighting) and delinquency (e.g., truancy, vandalism, alcohol and drug use) are predominately determined by the behaviors of youth in one's primary friendship. Computer involvement in adolescent networks is growing in recent years, giving rise to new group dynamics and new opportunities to study group interactions and individual preferences.The work proposed here will develop algorithms and methodologies for inferring adolescent network structure from partial observations about individuals. It will take information collected from small middle schools to infer information about larger groups of students. The PIs will create a set of games for use in the classroom that would collect data for this research while also providing information about class dynamics. The data sets collected through those games will be compared with previous approaches.This research has potential impact on a wide range of disciplines. Innovations in identifying adolescent network structures will allow better estimation of the role of peers in the rising rates of risky adolescent behaviors. The intellectual partnership between an expert in computer science and one in psychology represents an important step in bringing innovative computational thinking to better understand issues of real-world significance such as youth aggression and delinquency.