School Disadvantage, Relational Peer Culture, and Adolescent Academic Achievement and School Engagement

• In Event: Poster Session 9
  In Poster Session: School Disadvantage, Relational Peer Culture, and Adolescent Academic Achievement and School Engagement

Abstract

A growing body of empirical work demonstrates that a school’s relational peer culture is an important predictor of students’ academic attitudes and behaviors. However, there is no research available to date that explores how a school’s relational peer culture may interact with other characteristics of the school context to produce unique outcomes. The current analyses uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to explore the idea that the links between relational peer culture and student academic attainment are moderated by school disadvantage among a sample of N=18,921 students from N=132 schools. Results support the hypothesis that in more disadvantaged schools, the effects of relational peer culture may be stronger than in schools with more resources.

Author

• Alicia Doyle Lynch, Boston College