Application of social network analysis to education has revealed how social network positions of K-12 students correlate with their behavior and academic achievements. However, no study has been conducted on how their social network influences their academic progress over time. Here we investigated correlations between high school students’ academic progress over one year and the social environment that surrounds them in their friendship network. We found that students whose friends’ average GPA (Grade Point Average) was greater (or less) than their own had a higher tendency toward increasing (or decreasing) their academic ranking over time, indicating social contagion of academic success taking place in their social network.
References
[1]
Wasserman S, Faust K (1994) Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 857 p.
[2]
Farmer TW, Rodkin PC (1996) Antisocial and prosocial correlates of classroom social positions: the social network centrality perspective. Social Development 5: 174–188.
[3]
Bishop N (2009) The relation between peer group grades, social network structure, and secondary school academic achievement. Paper presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. Available: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p308630_？index.html. Accessed 31 August 2012.
[4]
Add Health Data (1994-) Available: http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealt？h/data. Accessed 31 Aug 2012.
[5]
Fryer RG, Torelli P (2010) An empirical analysis of ‘acting white’. J Public Econ 94: 380–396.
[6]
Boothroyd C, Benson B, Blansky D, Kavanaugh C, Gallagher J, et al.. (2011) Academic achievement and personal satisfaction in high school social networks. Poster presented at NetSci 2011: International School and Conference on Network Science. Available: https://sites.google.com/a/binghamton.ed？u/netsci-high-2011-2012/netsci-high-2011. Accessed 31 Aug 2012.
[7]
Newman M E (2003) The structure and function of complex networks. SIAM Review 45: 167–256.
[8]
Gkantsidis C, Mihail M, Zegura E (2003) The Markov chain simulation method for generating connected power law random graphs. In Proc 5th Workshop on Algorithm Engineering and Experiments (ALENEX).
[9]
Christakis NA, Fowler JH (2007) The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years. New Engl J Med 357: 370–379.
[10]
Fowler JH, Christakis NA (2008) Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study. Br Med J 337: a2338.
[11]
Coronges K, Stacy AW, Valente TW (2011) Social network influences of alcohol and marijuana cognitive associations. Addict Behav 36: 1305–1308.
[12]
Iyengar R, Van den Bulte C, Valente TW (2011) Opinion leadership and social contagion in new product diffusion. Marketing Sci 30: 195–212.
[13]
Granovetter MS (1973) The strength of weak ties. Am J Sociol 78: 1360–1380.
[14]
Eagle N (2011) Mobile phones as sensors for social research. In: Hesse-Biber SN, editor. The Handbook of Emergent Technologies in Social Research. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Chap 22.
[15]
Stehlé J, Voirin N, Barrat A, Cattuto C, Isella L, et al. (2011) High-resolution measurements of face-to-face contact patterns in a primary school. PLOS ONE 6(8): e23176.
