Feb 03, 2017 09:54 PM EST By Audri Taylors, UniversityHerald Reporter

Students who drop out of school face a challenging future as they might have a difficulty with employment and are more likely to live in poverty and be prone to abuse of drugs and alcohol. However, families, most especially parents, can play a significant role when it comes to making sure their children graduate. In fact, a study shows that parental involvement is one of the leading indicators of a student's performance and of whether the student will eventually graduate.

According to NCSET, dropping out of school is not always an internal decision of a youth. There are various factors that influence this decision including their problems with their teachers, they have low grades, or they just do not like the thought of school at all.

The new mathematical modeling from Arizona State University, Northeastern Illinois University, and the University of Texas at Arlington looked at the impact of peer as well as parental influences to a student's academic performance, according to Science Daily. In the study, parental involvement and social influences from peers were both measured and after the results were categorized, the data was eventually applied in a mathematical method which is used to track the spread of social and biological problems.

Anuj Mubayi, now an assistant professor with ASU's School of Human Evolution and Social Change said that the underlying principle of the study was to point out that social behaviors can spread interpersonally through social interactions and influences, similar to infectious diseases.

This means that parents have the power to "immunize" their kids against dropping out but only to a point. The researchers explained that it is because a student with high parental involvement hits a moderately high range of negative influence from peers, their risk of failing and dropping out begins to trend upward on a similar trajectory as those students whose parents do not show much involvement.

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