Social Network Structure and Group Performance in Education

Student: Lebedev Pavel

Educational Programme: Joint HSE-NES Undergraduate Program in Economics (Bachelor)

Final Grade: 9

Year of Graduation: 2018

In our research we measure the effect of academic groups' social network structure on their relative performance in university environment. We collect a new dataset using Russian biggest social network site VK as a primary source and utilize natural experiment of random academic group assignment in Higher School of Economics to isolate idiosyncratic effects of students' individual characteristics. We also introduce ways to measure the weight of each connection within the network, based on information from VK. We show that there is a significant positive effect of network density on group's relative GPA and this effect is stronger and more significant when we use our metrics for connection weights.

Full text (added May 26, 2018)

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