“Psst … What Do You Think?” The Relationship between Advice Prestige, Type of Advice, and Academic Performance

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between classmates seeking out a student for advice (advice prestige) and that student's academic performance. Students’ conversations could inhibit or encourage their academic performance depending on the conversation's topic. Specifically, it is hypothesized that as more classmates report asking a student for general advice, then the student would perform less well. In contrast, it is hypothesized that as more classmates report asking a student for class advice, then the student would perform better. Hypotheses (n =139) were supported. Even after controlling for sex and GPA, less general-advice prestige and higher class-advice prestige relates to higher academic performance.

Keywords:

• Networks
• Academic Performance
• Advice
• College Student Interaction
• Student Information-Seeking

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Wendi Miller for her insights and Dr. Patricia Kearney for her constructive suggestions.

Notes

1. Although other estimates for centrality, such as betweenness and closeness (Wasserman & Faust, 1994), are available, degree centrality is robust to isolates in a network, those people who have no ties to anyone. In addition, it represents a stress of more people.

2. The course's instructor did not see information about the students’ networks.

3. Students’ advice prestige estimates were highly correlated, r(137)=.73, p<.05. According to Kline (1998), multicolinearity is present when the correlation between two independent variables is greater than .85 so both estimates were retained in this analysis.

4. No differences appeared by race, F<1, or age, r(137)=.02, ns. In addition, a second ANOVA was computed with sex as a factor to test for interactions between sex and the advice effects. The interactions between sex and serving as a source of advice were not statistically significant.

5. Thank you to an anonymous reviewer for this insight.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rachel A. Smith

Rachel Smith (Ph.D., Michigan State, 2003) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Arts & Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University

Brittany L. Peterson

Brittany Peterson (M.A., University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 2005) is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas, Austin