Student engagement is a strong predictor of academic achievement and overall school success. Much of the research on engagement has focused on the role of personal psychological antecedents and social factors related to one’s teachers. Relatively fewer studies have focused on the influence of one’s classmates. Drawing on prior work on social contagion, this study aimed to examine whether classmates’ engagement influences one’s engagement. Questionnaires were administered to 848 secondary school students nested within 30 classes. Two waves of data were collected seven months apart. Multilevel modelling showed that a student’s Time 2 engagement was positively predicted by his/her classmates’ engagement at Time 1, providing evidence for the social contagion of engagement. These findings held even after controlling for autoregressor effects and other relevant covariates such as demographic factors and achievement goals. Our results suggest that students’ engagement in school is contagious and could be transmitted among classmates.

中文翻译：

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学生参与学校的社会传染

学生参与度是学业成就和学校整体成功的有力预测因素。许多关于参与的研究都集中在个人心理前因和与教师相关的社会因素的作用上。关注同学影响的研究相对较少。本研究借鉴先前关于社会传染的工作，旨在检验同学的参与是否影响一个人的参与。对嵌套在 30 个班级中的 848 名中学生进行了问卷调查。相隔七个月收集了两波数据。多层次模型表明，学生在时间 2 的参与度被他/她的同学在时间 1 的参与度积极预测，为参与度的社会传染提供了证据。即使在控制了自回归效应和其他相关协变量（如人口因素和成就目标）之后，这些发现仍然成立。我们的研究结果表明，学生对学校的参与具有传染性，可以在同学之间传播。