Does the Schema of top Peer Pressure and its Relationship with Achievement Change from Junior High School to University?

Abstract

Background: The schema of top peer pressure (TPP) consists of nine hierarchical cognitive taxa measured by the Top Peer Pressure Scale (TPPS): domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species and word. The TPPS taken by undergraduate university students’ (UUSs) has shown that their TPP consists of eight taxa among which four, i.e., domain, kingdom, class, and family associate negatively with their university achievement. Objective: To find out what taxa constitute the TPP of junior high school students (JHSSs) and which taxa associate with the JHSSs’ English and school achievement. Methodology: The TPPS was administered to 304 male HSSs. Following the designers of the TPPS, JHSSs’ responses were subjected to Principal Axis Factoring and Varimax with Kaiser Normalization to extract and rotate the factors underlying the TPPS. The factors represented cognitive taxa other than the domain, species and word empirically. Results: Six rotated factors were extracted from JHSSs’ responses on the TPPS representing their cognitive taxa of kingdom, phylum, class, order, family and genus. Among these taxa the kingdom associated significantly with both English language and school achievement. The taxon of family associated significantly only with the English language achievement. Conclusion: The schema of TPP helps JHSSs achieve not only in English language but also in other courses offered in school at its kingdom taxon. UUSs pathologically manipulate the items comprising the schema not only at its kingdom taxon but also at the taxa of phylum, class and order to justify their low university achievement.