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This study asks to what extent similarity in status characteristics (gender and ethnicity) is linked with similarity in anti-school behaviour. We argue that the social forces responsible for homophily-based selection are also at work with regard to homophily-based influence. We use data from the Flemish Educational Assessment Study, which collected complete network data from a representative sample of Flemish secondary school adolescents (N = 11,872). Results indicate that similarity on gender and ethnicity is linked with similarity on behavioural characteristics. Furthermore, the association between status homophily and behavioural homophily is stronger for boys than girls. For minorities, status heterophily on ethnicity is associated with behavioural heterophily, which may be an indication that minority students distance themselves from their majority-group friends.

Peer influence is regarded as one of the strongest determinants of adolescents' behavior. Yet the concept of peer influence has been studied almost exclusively in terms of dyadic friendship relations. Based on actors' similar positions in the friendship network, the authors test an alternative mechanism of influence in this article, drawing on insights from network-inspired theories. This study focuses on both sexual activity and school deviant behavior. The authors used data from the Flemish Educational Assessment Study, which collected complete network data from a representative sample of Flemish secondary school adolescents ( N = 11,872), clustered in 160 networks. Results indicate that best friends influence both adolescents' sexual activity and their school deviancy. However, the authors found no evidence of influence between actors who share a similar position in the network.

This article sets out to critically assess the increasingly prevalent claims of rapidly changing global power relations under influence of the 'rising powers' and 'globalization'. Our main contention is that current analyses of countries' degree of global power (especially for the BRICS) has been dominated by the control over resources approach that, though gauging power potential, insufficiently takes into account how this potential is converted into actual global might. By drawing on a unique and extensive dataset comprising of a wide array of political, economic and military networks for a vast number of countries between 1965 and 2005, we aim to 1) reassess alleged changes in the structure of the world-system since 1965 and 2) to analyze whether these changes can be attributed to 'globalization'. Significant attention is paid to the trajectories of the BRICS and to the possibly divergent structural evolutions of the political and economic dimensions that constitute the system. Our results show that despite a certain degree of power convergence between countries at the sub-top of the system, overall, divergence continues to take place between the most and least powerful, and stratification is reproduced. Globalization is further shown to exacerbate this trend, though its effect differs on the political and economic dimensions of the system. Overall, though the traditional 'core powers' might have to share their power with newcomer China in the future, this hardly heralds a new age in which the global system of power relations are converging to the extent that stratification is being undermined.

The peer group is an important developmental context for children. In this paper we present a method to operationalize a child's integration into the classroom by their informal social classroom roles, which we obtained using a blockmodel analysis based on role equivalence. This method differs in several respects from the common socio-metric status approach. Analysis of multiplex social relationships of 1,241 first-grade children in 71 classrooms showed nine empirical classroom roles. The roles were not associated with physical attractiveness not with ethnic ancestry, were associated only weakly with age, sex, and intelligence, and were associated strongly with school adjustment. Classroom roles and sociometric status were clearly associated, but measured different aspects of a child's integration into the classroom. For all school problems except academic performance, classroom roles explained a much larger proportion of the variance than did sociometric status.

Gender differences in professional health service use in 25 European countries A study on the impact of medicalisation attitudes and gender stratification.In this paper we investigate the impact of gender stratification on the gender gap in both medicalisation attitudes and
professional health care use. Furthermore, we examine to what extent medicalisation attitudes explain the gender gap in professional health care use. Using data from the second wave of the European Social Survey (N = 42028), we find that women report more positive attitudes towards medicalisation
than men, explaining a small part of the gender gap in professional health care use. No association was observed between gender stratification and the gender gap in medicalisation attitudes or health care use. However, respondents living in societies characterized by a lower level of gender
stratification, position themselves more independently towards physicians, while they use professional health care more frequently.

This study uses data from the 2004 Malawi Demographic and Health Survey to assess the reach of selected radio programs about family planning and health in Malawi and their effect on condom use and discussion of family planning. The results show that such radio programs in Malawi reach a broad audience: eight of the 12 programs were heard by at least half of the respondents, although women were less effectively reached than men. For both women and men, the radio programs were found to have a significant impact on family planning discussion with one's partner. The programs'effect on condom use was limited, however. A positive association was found with ever use of condoms, but no association was found with condom use at last intercourse. This limited impact suggests that such radio communication campaigns need to be informed by research identifying the specific constraints to current condom use in Malawi.

The present study elucidates the association between students' education type and alcohol use, controlling for other socio-economic background characteristics. A subsample of data from the second International Self-Reported Delinquency Study was used (N= 10,525), collected among adolescents in the seventh to ninth grades of secondary school in four Western European countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria). Data were analyzed with multilevel logistic regression techniques. There is an indication that type of education affects prevalence rates of drunkenness and heavy episodic drinking; these effects prove robust for differences in socio-economic backgrounds. The results of this study support the literature regarding the role of the educational system in the reproduction of health inequalities and underscore the finding that students from education types of lower status are at greater risk than those from higher status types.