Skipping to the bigger pond: Examining gender differences in students' psychosocial development after early acceleration

Whereas studies that have analyzed factors that affect academic achievement have predominantly revealed positive effects of skipping a grade, controversial results have been found for students' social-emotional and motivational development. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the effects of skipping a whole grade on students' school satisfaction, peer relations, school anxiety, and academic self-concept. Moreover, we conducted moderation analyses to investigate whether skipping a grade affects boys and girls differently. Data were obtained from N = 4926 German students who were repeatedly surveyed once a year in Grades 4, 5, and 6. A total of N = 96 students from this sample had skipped a grade in elementary school. We applied full matching separately for male and female students in order to minimize selection bias. When analyzing motivational variables, we added class-mean achievement scores as covariates within the matching process. Equally for boys and girls, the results showed no significant effect of skipping on school satisfaction, yet we found a negative effect on peer relations that persisted across the 3 years of measurement. However, after skipping a grade girls were significantly disadvantaged compared to boys on some motivational dimensions.