Friends, academic achievement, and school engagement during adolescence : A social network approach to peer influence and selection effects

Abstract Peers become increasingly important socializing agents for academic behaviors and attitudes during adolescence. This study investigated peer influence and selection effects on adolescents' emotional (i.e., flow in schoolwork, school burnout, school value), cognitive (i.e., school effort), and behavioral (i.e., truancy) engagement in school. A social network approach was used to examine students of post-comprehensive education in Finland (N = 1419; mean age = 16). Students were asked to nominate peers to generate peer networks and to describe their own school engagement at two time points (one year apart). Network analyses revealed that the degree to which peer influence and selecti…