University of Tübingen Study Suggests Link Between Academic Performance and Popularity Among Students
Stereotypes about unpopular nerds persist – not least because of the often cliched portrayal in the media. A research team from the Hector Institute for Empirical Educational Research at the University of Tübingen and the Institute for Quality Development in Education (IQB) at the Humboldt University in Berlin has now used data from a large-scale study to investigate what the social integration of high-performing students actually is and students. Dr. Claudia Neuendorf, who now conducts research at the University of Potsdam, led the project.
The result: young people who perform well at school are generally better integrated into their classes than those who do worse. In addition, high-performing students are asked for help much more often than lower-performing students. This is most pronounced among those boys and girls who are high achievers in several subjects. These findings contradict the widespread stereotype that adolescents who do well in school are more likely to be teased and are more likely to be loners.
For their study, Neuendorf and her team examined data from the IQB education trend from around 45,000 ninth grade students in Germany. The aim was to establish a connection between academic performance and several facets of social integration, such as friendship, acceptance, contact and subjective integration.
For the first three facets, the students were asked specifically who their friends were in the class. Sociometric measures could then be calculated from the answers, for example how popular someone is, how many people ask him or her for help, who is more likely to be rejected (“Who don’t you want to sit next to?”) and how many reciprocal friendships someone has. Subjective integration was determined using psychometric measures, that is, students were asked how well integrated they felt.
The educational researchers were also interested in what the situation is like for boys and girls who perform well in subjects that are assigned to the other gender stereotype. They came to the conclusion that boys who are good at languages and biology and girls who are good at mathematics and physics also demonstrate good social integration.
“The message from our study is that many high-performing children are very well socially integrated, regardless of whether their performance is supposedly gender-conforming or non-conforming,” says Neuendorf. “This insight is hopefully a further building block in reducing fears and prejudices in this regard.” The educational researcher emphasizes that stereotypes of all kinds must be dissolved in all areas of society so that children and young people can develop their potential regardless of their gender. In order for this to be successful, teachers, parents, media professionals, but also science should work to ensure that stereotypes do not become entrenched.