Ye, Leafia Zi and Jason Fletcher. 2022. “Immigrant Status and the Social Returns to Academic Achievement in Adolescence.”

Question 1

research question

Answer 1

Do “high-achieving students of color” become less popular among their
peers if they display academic excellence?

Question 2

why is this topic important

Answer 2

• it might undermine the motivation to do well in school and
• this in turn could amplify inequalities between groups

Question 3

hypothesis

Answer 3

The effect of academic achievement on
popularity among peers is negative for Black and
American Indian youth from native-born families
and nonexistent or positive for immigrant
minority students of any race/ethnicity.

Question 4

what research design

Answer 4

• this paper reflects a “secondary data analysis” because the data has already been collected by other researchers and are (often) publically for sociologists/anyone to analyze
• use an existing
  dataset from a survey: the National Longitudinal
  Study of Adolescent to Adult Health.

Question 5

how did they operationalize academic achievement

Answer 5

• academic achievement (one of their key IV) as GPA
• GPA is constructed from student’s grades in 4 subjects; english, math, history, and science
• average grade for all subjects for which the student the student has a grade (A=4, B=3, C=2, D or less=1)

Question 5

how did they operationalize a student’s popularity

Answer 5

• key outcome variables are receiving any friendship nomination and the number of friendship nominations received
• Both are derived
  from a measure of the number of times students were nominated by another student as one of their 10 best friends.”

Question 6

results

Answer 6

The relationship between GPA & popularity depends on both race/ethnicity & immigrant status.
* There was no evidence that any group experienced social sanctions for academic achievement

Question 7

probabilistic relationship they found

Answer 7

2 variables go together with some level of regularity. “Each point increase in GPA is associated with a 16% increase in the odds of receiving any friendship nominations.” = (“As GPA goes up, so does popularity”)

Question 8

conclusions

Answer 8

The findings agree with theoretical frameworks that
predict that the relationship between achievement
and popularity is stratified by race/ethnicity within
immigrants…As such, this study contributes to a
growing body of research that documents unequal
outcomes among the children of immigrants.

Question 9

evidence of a penalty?

Answer 9

• among straight-a students from native-born families receive about one more friendship nomination than do native non-white and second-generation immigrant students, and about two more nominations then do foreign-born students