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.