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Published on: September 4, 2019
Personality as a moderator of context effects on academic achievement
A A Jolijn Hendriks1, Hans Kuyper, Miranda J Lubbers
1Groningen Institute for Educational Research (GION), University of Groningen, The Netherlands. a.a.j.hendriks@rug.nl
Abstract:
We investigated whether personality moderates group influence of classmates on academic achievement and whether these so-called context effects can be attributed to peer pressure. The sample consisted of 2498 students in their first year of Dutch secondary education. The data were analyzed by a two-level (students within classes) analysis, separately for boys (n=1033, in 92 classes) and girls (n=1465, in 119 classes). For both sexes, we found a context effect on Dutch language achievement but not on mathematics achievement. Emotional Stability appeared a moderator of this context effect but for girls only. The results suggest further that peer pressure is not a likely mechanism of group influence of classmates on academic achievement.
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