Homophilie im Kindergarten? Freundschaften im Jahr vor der Einschulung

There is a lot of empirical evidence of homophily, i.e. that we are more likely to have contact with similar people. For school-aged children, there are many studies that find homophily relating to gender, ethnicity and social class. On the other hand, insufficient research has been done into whether pre-school children also demonstrate homophile preferences in their friendships. The cross-sectional study presented here tackles this research gap and quantitatively examines the friendships of N = 96 pre-school children. To this end, children and parents were asked about their friendships and contacts at the nursery in standardised personal interviews. The results show that even pre-school children tend to have friendships with children of the same gender within their nursery group. At the same time, the results also show—in contrast to studies about the contacts of older children—that neither a similar ethnic background nor a similar economic or cultural family background makes friendships between pre-school children more likely.