Peer Effects and Peer Group Processes: Joining the Conversation on Quantitative and Qualitative Methods

Abstract

The interest in ‘peer effects’, which includes the effects on educational attainment of school ability or socioeconomic status composition, raises methodological issues that require careful discussion. It is argued with reference to a recent collaborative text by Australian and New Zealand authors representing quantitative and qualitative approaches that school composition effects are not necessarily peer effects and that the term ‘effect’ cannot be restricted by a positivist definition. It is further argued that the practice of using aggregated student responses as measures of institutional properties is fundamentally unsound. This case is supported by a detailed study of attitudes to school and their association with educational progress held by two groups of secondary students. It is concluded that a realist understanding of the properties of social entities might offer the basis for a collaborative approach more productive than the conventional paradigm now dominant in this field.