More friends of the opposite gender, higher school grades

More friends of the opposite gender, higher school grades - or maybe not

Boys with many girl friends in their friendship circle performed better at school than boys who only had male friends (The Economist, August 8, 2015). The same 1995 study revealed no link between the number of male friends girls at high school had and their school grades.

However, a University of South Carolina study published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (July 2015) called ‘The girl next door: The effect of opposite gender friends on high school achievement’ reveals a different result.

Andrew Hill of USC wanted to eliminate any possible bias in the study (e.g. parents choosing friends for their children), so instead of looking at the number of opposite-gender friends, he looked at the proportion of shoolmates of either sex living near each student being surveyed. The rationale was that parents do not choose where to live based on the gender of their neighbour’s children. The neighbourhood method was likely to take out the bias, but still be relevant because children are more likely to be friends with other children who live close to them.

Hill selected 20 closest neighbours for each of the 450 high school students in the research survey. He then isolated the effects of having more friends of the opposite gender on school performance, taking each student’s grades.

He found that for every 10% more children of the opposite sex among a student’s friendship circle, the student’s grade-point average (GPA) declined by 0.1 (GPAs range from 0 to 4). Therefore if a student (male or female) had 10 friends of the opposite gender, they would score 1 GPA less than students who had less friends of the opposite gender.

Below the age of 16 years, the effects of having more opposite-gender friends are restricted to science and mathematics grades only. Beyond 16 years, the effects of declining grades were seen in English and history grades too. So more friends of the opposite gender, the lower the school grades.

But there were advantages of having several opposite-gender friends during high school. Hill’s original group of 14 years ago were re-interviewed. And Hill found that the more opposite-gender friends, the more likely that the student was or had been married.

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