The fellow effect on college students’ academic performance

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Guohua Zeng¹  Minglong Zhong¹  Wenwen Wu¹ 

[1] School of Economics and Management, Jiangxi University of Science and Technology

关键词: Peer effect;    fellow effect;    academic performance;    university students;    University education;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1055963

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

This paper uses data from the 2018 College Graduates Employment Survey in a province in central China to investigate whether there is a fellow effect (a special kind of peer effect) among groups of college students in colleges and universities. It was found that a group of fellows with higher academic achievement would have a significant positive effect on individual students' achievement; conversely, it would have a significant negative effect on individual student’s achievement. To avoid endogeneity problems, this paper conducted a two-stage regression analysis using the average education level of the parents of the fellow as an instrumental variable; to ensure the robustness of the findings, this paper used the fellow sample at the municipal level for the regression. The analysis of heterogeneity found that the effect of good grades in the fellow had a greater impact on the individual academic performance of girls compared to boys; in terms of geography, the effect of fellow showed a decreasing trend from eastern to central and western China; in terms of major categories, the effect of fellow also showed a greater difference between humanities majors and social science majors.

【 授权许可】

CC BY