Social contagion and high school dropout: The role of friends, romantic partners, and siblings.

Abstract

Social contagion theories suggest that adolescents in relationships with same-age high school dropouts should be at a greater risk of dropping out themselves. Yet, few studies have examined this premise, and none have considered all potentially influential same-age intimates, focusing instead on only either friends or siblings. Moreover, a key influence in adolescents’ social worlds, romantic partners, has been ignored. The goal of this study was to provide a comprehensive view of dropout contagion by considering occurrences of dropout among friends, siblings, and romantic partners. Data came from a sample of Canadian adolescents (N = 545) comprising one third of high school dropouts; a second third of carefully matched at-risk but persevering schoolmates; and a last third of average, not-at-risk students. As predicted, adolescents were at greater risk of dropping out when a member of their network had recently left school (i.e., in the past year, OR = 3.11; 95% CI [1.78, 6.27]), with independent associations of nontrivial sizes for occurrences of dropout among friends, romantic partners, and siblings (ORs between 1.97 [95% CI 1.25, 3.41] and 3.12 [95% CI 1.23, 11.0]). Moreover, adolescents seemed particularly at risk of quitting school (OR = 4.88; 95% CI [2.54, 12.5]) when their networks included more than one type of same-age intimate (e.g., a friend and a sibling) who had recently dropped out. Findings suggest that social contagion of dropout is a pervasive phenomenon in low-income schools and that prevention programs should target adolescents with same-age intimates who have recently left school.

Diseases of despair in early adulthood: The complex role of social relationships.

“…The materials and analysis code for this study are not available due to ethical reasons related to the confidential nature of the interview material. This study’s design was reported in previous publications (Dupéré, Dion, Leventhal, et al, 2018; Dupéré et al, 2021). The analyses were not preregistered.…”

Typologies of Early School Leavers from Secondary Education: A Review Study

“…The integrative stress process (the life course theory of dropout) (Dupéré et al, 2015) explains dropout as a consequence of the coalescing of several events triggering the process of leaving school. This can be, for example, the chronic absence of students with long-term illnesses or mental health problems (Dupéré et al, 2015;Fortin et al, 2006) or a type of social infection when close friends leave school (Dupéré et al, 2021). This configuration of stressors can include both immediate factors and factors that may not appear serious but that persist throughout life and can make a student more at risk of failing at school (Dupéré et al, 2021).…”

Do birds of a feather leave the nest together? The role of sibling personality similarity in the transition to adulthood

“…Drawing on these theories, a number of studies have documented that siblings who are alike in terms of demographic characteristics are more likely to be a stronger source of contagion and role models and pave the way for one another. For example, siblings with a smaller age difference have a higher chance of influencing each other regarding dropping out of high school [ 31 ], leaving the parental home [ 7 ], and entry into parenthood [ 14 ]. Same-gender siblings are also more similar with respect to internal migration [ 30 ] and patterns of family formation [ 15 ].…”

“…Same-gender siblings are also more similar with respect to internal migration [ 30 ] and patterns of family formation [ 15 ]. One of the reasons sibling similarity is related to life-course resemblance is their relationship quality and emotional closeness [ 13 , 31 , 32 ], that siblings similar in age shared more experiences during childhood and could thus enhance relationship closeness in adulthood [ 33 ]. Other studies indicated that gender similarity is associated with increased sibling support and interaction [ 34 , 35 ].…”