Thaindian News

Washington, June 4 (IANS) Extra classes, extra-curricular activities, tutoring, parents’ gentle prodding - all may count in giving a child that edge in academics. But parents still puzzle over what the right mix is to make their children excel in school.
The missing factor could be the friends a child keeps, specifically at school — the ones who sweat the same tests and homework and crib about the same teachers, rather than those they may make outside of school.

Study co-author Andrew J. Fuligni, professor of psychiatry, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), along with his former graduate student Melissa R. Witkow said adolescents with more in-school friends had higher grade-point averages.

The authors found that these associations were similar for boys and girls and cut across all ethnic groups.

Drawing from three Los Angeles-area high schools, the researchers recruited 629 12th-grade students, split almost evenly by sex, with an average age of 18; no single ethnic group predominated.

The students filled out a questionnaire, then kept a diary in which they logged such activities as time spent studying, time spent with in-school or out-of-school friends, and other activities.

Roughly speaking, the more in-school friends a child had, the higher the grade point average (GPA). Grades are standardised measurements of varying levels of comprehension within a subject area.

“We found that within an adolescent’s friendship group, those with a higher proportion of friends who attended the same school received higher grades,” said Witkow, now an assistant professor of psychology at Willamette University.

“This is partially because in-school friends are more likely to be achievement-oriented and share and support school-related activities, including studying, because they are all in the same environment.”

This is not to dismiss or put a negative spin on a child’s friends from outside school, Witkow said, according to an UCLA release.

“These friendships are still important in terms of fulfilling adolescents’ social needs, and they are not necessarily always detrimental to achievement.”

“For instance, friendships that form in academic settings outside of school, such as at an enrichment class, may very well promote achievement,” added Witkow.

These findings were published online in the Journal of Research on Adolescence.