Title:
Peer Pressure Affects Academic Performance of Second Year Students

Dependent Variable:
Academic performance of second year students

Independent Variable:
Peer Pressure

Objective:
To know how academic performance among second year high school students is being affected by peer pressure.

Introduction:
To be successful in life, one must begin by being successful in school. In high school, we were all told to work hard so that we could get good grades and scores that would get us into a good college, eventually getting us a good career. And that was success.
School and school-related activities, over a period of time, are essential in an adolescent’s life. These comprise one-third or half of a typical adolescent’s
Reis and McCoach (2000) report that peer issues may also contribute to the achievement and underachievement of adolescents. Peer relationships impact adolescent behavior; found that high-achieving peers had a positive influence on gifted students who began to underachieve in high school. Positive peer interaction contributed to some students' reversal of underachievement. Likewise, negative peer attitudes can often account for underachievement. Underachieving students frequently report peer influence as the strongest force impeding their achievement. These findings support the notion that there is a correlation between a student's achievement and the achievement of his or her closest peer group.

A study conducted by Boehnke (2007) examined consequences of high peer pressure on academic performance in mathematics among 14-year-old middle-school students in Germany, Canada, and Israel. Its core assumption is that students with very high abilities in mathematics underachieve in order to avoid social exclusion (in the form of being called, e.g., nerds) in their schools. Altogether almost 1,700 students were surveyed in the three cultures. Findings of the study make it obvious that—concerning achievement in mathematics—the primary victims of peer pressure in middle school are girls, boys more likely