Adapt interventions that leverage peer relationships to curb the social contagion of dropout in high schools¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 6 claims (6 for) · 1 study (1 associational), q3 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 6 claims rest on one study

Description¶

Beyond improved monitoring, the authors suggest prevention programs "could achieve better results by explicitly taking social networks into account". Interventions that directly leverage peer relationships have improved peer norms and curbed contagion of problematic behaviors like substance use or suicide attempts; peer cooperation strategies fostering positive interactions between at-risk and well-adjusted youth in middle school reduced negative peer influences and alcohol use. The authors propose adapting such interventions for the high school context to curtail dropout contagion.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Adaptation of existing peer-leverage intervention models to the high school context

Constraints¶

• The cited peer-leverage evidence concerns outcomes other than dropout (substance use, suicide attempts, alcohol use) and middle school settings

Target Learners¶

• High school adolescents, including at-risk youth in disadvantaged communities

Target Learning Goals¶

• High school perseverance and dropout prevention

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 [+M]
• Dropout among friends, romantic partners, and siblings each shows an independent association with an adolescent's own dropout [+M]
• Risk of dropout is especially high when an adolescent's network includes more than one type of same-age intimate who recently dropped out [+M]
• 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 [+M]
• The association between network dropout and adolescents' own dropout does not significantly differ by gender or by regular versus special education sector [+M]
• The main dropout-contagion findings remained essentially unchanged across five robustness checks including unmatched samples, IPTW, and conditional regression [+M]

Related Strategies¶

• Design peer mindset interventions that leverage adolescents' need for belonging and status, including high-status peer models

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• 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