Adolescents are at greater risk of dropping out when at least one same-age intimate (friend, romantic partner, or sibling) has recently dropped out of school¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2021 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? After adjusting for confounders, the presence of at least one dropout among friends, romantic partners, or siblings was independently associated with participants' dropout (OR = 2.85, 95% CI 1.77-5.05). → Dupéré 2021

Evidence¶

Dupéré 2021¶

Dupéré, V., Dion, E., Cantin, S., Archambault, I., & Lacourse, E. (2021). Social contagion and high school dropout: The role of friends, romantic partners, and siblings. Journal of Educational Psychology, 113, 572-584. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000484

q3 · i? · associational · r2

Multiple logistic regression on dropout cases and matched at-risk controls (n = 366) from a two-stage matched case-control study in 12 francophone public high schools, with bootstrapped standard errors and confounders controlled. The adjusted association was "independently associated with dropout among participants, with a non-trivial effect size (OR = 2.85, 95% CI 1.77-5.05)"; no standardized effect size was printed.

"occurrences of dropout in one's social network, irrespective of the same-age intimates involved, were independently associated with dropout among participants, with a non-trivial effect size (OR = 2.85, 95% CI 1.77-5.05)"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Only recent (within the past year) occurrences of dropout in an adolescent's network are associated with the adolescent's own dropout; older occurrences are not — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Dropout among friends, romantic partners, and siblings each shows an independent association with an adolescent's own dropout — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Risk of dropout is especially high when an adolescent's network includes more than one type of same-age intimate who recently dropped out — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• The main dropout-contagion findings remained essentially unchanged across five robustness checks including unmatched samples, IPTW, and conditional regression — related
• The association between network dropout and adolescents' own dropout does not significantly differ by gender or by regular versus special education sector — related