Dinamika Peer Group pada Mahasiswa Fakultas Psikologi Unika Atma Jaya: Penelitian Cross-sectional dengan Metode Sosiometri

The current study aimed at describing the life of undergraduate student of Faculty of PsychologyAtma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia through peer group dynamics. Peer group oftendetermined who will be asked to join for doing an academic group task (‘kelompok tugas’), whowill be chosen to hang out together (‘teman nongkrong’), dan who can be trusted to talk aboutpersonal issues (‘teman curhat’). Peer groups were not static, thus we also explored peer groupdynamics based on time dimension, i.e. beginning (‘semester 2’), middle (‘semester 4’) and end(‘semester 6’) period of study. An explorative-descriptive research design with sociometric methodswere used in the study. Participants were 126 undergraduate students from the same year of entry.Data were analyzed by means of sociomatrix, choice status of a person and sociogram. The resultsshowed the differences peer group dynamics between situations (kelompok tugas, teman nongkrong,teman curhat) and between periods of study (semester 2, semester 4, semester 6). This studyrevealed the possible use of sociometric methods for policy socialization strategy and as a methodfor identifying potential academic and non-academic problems.

Adolescents’ Negative Experiences in Organized Youth Activities

Research indicates that organized youth activities are most often a context of positive development. However, there is a smaller body of evidence suggesting that these activities are sometimes a context of negative experiences that may impede learning or lead to dropping out. To better understand negative experiences in youth activities, we conducted ten focus groups with adolescents. Youths’ descriptions provide an overview of the range of types of negative experiences they encountered, as well as how they responded to them. The most frequent types of negative experiences involved peers and peer group dynamics and aversive behavior attributed to the adult leaders of the activities. The youth described two types of responses to their negative experiences - a passive response of feeling negative emotions, and active coping, which sometimes led to learning.