Research on adult personal-social networks has contributed greatly to an understanding of mental health, illness, and responses to stress. Fueled by this successful research and a growing concern for today's youth, the contributors to this volume have conducted investigations into the functioning and structures of the social networks of toddlers, school-age children, adolescents, and college students.

The editors of this volume move beyond vague generalizations about characteristic and behavior acquisition through socialization in childhood by applying a longitudinal perspective to the sampling of child, adolescent, and young-adult network research. Social Networks of Children, Adolescents, and College Students unites several major empirical studies of children's social networks, investigating the acquisition of specific behaviors from particular groups of individuals under certain conditions.

Topics covered include:

* the effects of social networks on child development and disorder

* the relationship between social networks and coping with stress the role of friends or groups in positive socialization

* Of special interest to practitioners, researchers, and advanced students are:

* comparative data on children from other cultural groups and non-mainstream American youths descriptions and evaluations of methodologies

* introductory materials by the editors commenting on the field and the research extensive bibliographies