Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the retention of university freshmen could be predicted using their peer relationships in a specific department. In this study, retention was defined as a student staying enrolled in their university for a certain period of time. Social relationships are formed through interaction between people, so both students’ self-perceptions and others’ perceptions of them must be accounted for, so we used a social network analysis that did so. We examined social networks visualizations that allowed for a rich interpretation of numerical information. Participants in this study were freshmen who enrolled in an undergraduate program in 2017, 2018, or 2019. We used the name generator method to determine how quantitative friendship network variables predicted the academic retention up to the first semester of 2020. Cox proportional hazard model analysis showed that the weighted indegree centrality with intimacy positively predicted retention. The results of this study can be used to identify and conduct interventions for students who may be likely to disenroll. However all of the students did not participate in the department, it was difficult to examine their entire peer networks. Thus, this study’s results cannot be generalized because the participants are students of a specific major, so further research is needed to produce more generalizable results.