Article,
Interpersonal influences on educational expectations: New evidence for Germany
Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, (April 2017)
Abstract
Previous research casts doubt on whether interpersonal influences on students’ expectations exist inhighly stratified education systems after students have been tracked into different secondary schooltypes. Against this background, we examine the influence of parents and friends on the educationalexpectations of secondary school students in the highly stratified German education system. For theanalyses we use unique representative data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS).In addition to standard cross-sectional analyses, school fixed-effects models and longitudinal fixed-effectspanel regressions are conducted, which make it possible to rule out a large number of factors that mightbe responsible for a spurious relationship. Across all analyses, we consistently find substantive influencesof parents and friends on the expectations of secondary school students.
