Peers are increasingly important in the lives of adolescents

(Berkel, 2009; Lehman, 2012; Li & Wright, 2014). Also, they highlight
that adolescents have various types of peers who deviate from the
dominant narrative (positive vs. negative peers) to a mixture of both
types of peers and how it varies by gender. Our findings underscore
the important role of school attachment, especially for African
American boys. These findings also highlight the potential risk for
African American boys (i.e., At-Risk group) and corroborate previous
literature underscoring the unique experiences of African American
boys (e.g., The 2010 Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and
Black Malesxs), in addition to the unique experiences of African
American girls (Belgrave, 2009). We also find that peer effects tend
to be stronger at the classroom level than at the grade level in most
cases we find no significant peer effects at the grade-within-school
level. This agrees with recent findings by (Carrell, Fullerton, and
West, 2009) that peer effects estimates can differ greatly depending
on the accuracy with which the econometrician identifies the set of
relevant peers. In most specifications, estimated peer effects are
smaller when teacher fixed effects are included in the model than when
they are omitted, reinforcing the importance of controlling for
unobserved teacher inputs when estimating classroom peer effects.

A study by (Bankole and Ogunsakin, 2015) investigated the

influence of peer group on the academic performance of secondary
school students in Ekiti State where a total of 225 secondary school
students were randomly selected from five mixed secondary schools.
The instrument used in the study is the Peer Group and Adolescent’s
Academic Performance (PGAAP) questionnaire. The reliability of the
instrument was determined through test-re-test method. The finding
showed that peers relationship influence academic performance of
secondary school students. (Online Cambridge Essential Dictionary,
2014) defined achievement as how well a student has learned what
he/she is expected to know or something good that one has done that
was difficult. Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (7thedition)
defined academic as something connected to education especially
studying in schools and universities, involving a lot of reading and
studying. Through interaction over many years acceptable social
customs are taught and fostered. Other children as well as adults can
have a great impact on a broad range of issues in the child`s life
including achievements in school. The kind of group a particular
child identifies with will sometimes determine the kind of influence
the group will have on his academic achievement. Children if not
checked often associate with bad friends and this could have a great
negative impact on them. During the period of adolescence, the amount
of influence that peer group has on one`s academic achievement could
be enormous. Peer influence can have both positive and negative
effects on an adolescent’s academic performance. Thus the ways and
manners by which peer group influence affects adolescents’ academic
performance needed to be researched and documented.

In both cases, research suggests that positive peer support is

associated with positive outcomes (Carter & Forsyth, 2010; Rice,
Barth, Guadagno, Smith, & McCallum, 2013; Ryabov, 2011; Wilson,
Karimpour, & Rodkin, 2011), and negative peer support is associated
with negative outcomes (Bellmore, Chen, & Rischall, 2013; Bettencourt
& Farrell, 2013; Young, Rebellon, Barnes, & Weerman, 2014). However,
adolescents’ quality of peer relationships is complex with some having
a combination of peers with both negative and positive achievement
values. This leads to ambiguity in understanding the diversity of
adolescent peers attitudes and behaviors, specifically toward school.
The notion that adolescents have only one set of peer
(positive or negative) as oppose to both types peers
(positive and negative) is misleading because it suggest that to be
academically successful, adolescents should only have peers with pro-
social behavior.
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