UPDATE ON A GROWING PEER PRACTICE: Peer Support Among Students
A quarter of the US population is enrolled as a student in some capacity. While this is a valued role, being a student is also often stressful, either due to the challenge of learning and being evaluated, or because of the fact that most students operate in a social setting that can be difficult.
Many people experience significant problems in the student role, with 5% of high school students dropping out, 40% of college students dropping out, and many others performing poorly either academically or emotionally.
It should not be a surprise that a variety of educational settings have begun using peer support in various forms to improve both the experience and the performance of students. The surprisingly large number of published research studies evaluating these peer interventions makes it clear that peer support for students is one of the largest and fastest growing areas of innovation outside of healthcare. It is important for all us to track the progress in this area. Consider the following findings documented just in the past year:
Peer support interventions have been found to be effective with the following groups:
· Middle School Students (Zhang, Zhao, & Shen, 2024).
· High School Students (Kondo & Kato, 2024).
· College Students (Pointon-Haas et al., 2024; Gregoire et al., 2024).
· Vocational School Students (Purnomo, Suciati, Herminaju, & Fayakun, 2025).
· Students in Entrepreneurial Training (Sutrisno, Ausat, Diawati, & Suherlan, 2024).
· Students in Graduate Training, Including Medical School Students (Givant et al., 2025).
· Students Enrolled in Particularly Challenging Course Topics such as Mathematics (Idris, 2024).
· College Students with Chronic Illnesses (Ball, Walter, & Fox, 2024).
· Students at Particular Risk of Dropout, such as new mothers or those with attention deficits (Capps, Evans, Owens, &
Allan, 2024; Shea, & Nguyen, 2025).
The following peer support interventions have been found to be effective:
· In-Person Peer Support Groups (Pointon-Haas et al., 2024)
· Virtual Peer Support Groups (Gregoire et al., 2024).
· Individual Peer Support (Shepherd, van den Berg, Reed, Caron, Yeates, & Emery, 2025).
· Peer Mentoring (Gehreke, Schilling, & Kauffeld, 2024).
· Peer Tutoring (Zuccoli, Annovazzi, Meneghetti, Culotta, & Trivigno, 2025).
The following benefits of peer support have been documented:
· Emotional benefits like reduced anxiety, improved self- esteem, improved confidence, reduced depression, improved
self-efficacy (Gehreke, Schilling, & Kauffeld, 2024).
· Social benefits like improved social support, improved connection to the school and to peers (Gehreke, Schilling, &
Kauffeld, 2024).
· Reduced stress (Purnomo, Suciati, Herminaju, & Fayakun, 2025).
· Benefits in school performance including improved GPA (Gehreke, Schilling, & Kauffeld, 2024).
· Improved motivation and study engagement (Ulmanen, Tikkanen, & Pyhältö, 2024).
· Reduced rates of dropout and failure (Gehreke, Schilling, & Kauffeld, 2024).
This research represents a ringing endorsement of the power of peer support. Researchers are documenting that peer support interventions are proving effective in education settings, with progress noted in a number of different settings, with different types of students, and with different formats. All of this innovative work offers the larger field a valuable opportunity. We should be looking for new interventions and practices that can be applied successfully outside of a school setting. We should be using these proven successes as evidence of the power of peer support in other settings – work settings, healthcare settings, community settings. We should be looking for opportunities for collaboration between educational peer support efforts and peer support in other settings. For example, can peer support groups in clinical or work settings add to the success of those adding school to their lives.
Look for continued growth in this area, given the current success and the level of new programming being developed.
REFERENCES
Ball, K. B., Walter, H. L., & Fox, H. B. (2024). Chronically Ill College Student Well-Being: A Systematic Review of the Literature. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 37(1), 3-17.
Capps, R. E., Evans, S. W., Owens, J. S., & Allan, D. M. (2024). A peer-supported school engagement intervention for youth with attention problems: development and implementation. School Mental Health, 16(3), 649-666.
Gehreke, L., Schilling, H., & Kauffeld, S. (2024). Effectiveness of peer mentoring in the study entry phase: A systematic review. Review of Education, 12(1), e3462.
Givant, M., Miao, X., Carrion, K., Gozali, A., Aref, Y., Chaij, J., ... & Chen, W. (2025). Let’s talk about it: A virtual peer support group for plastic surgeons and trainees to improve confidence and feasibility in family planning. Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery, 105, 112-114.
Grégoire, S., Beaulieu, F., Lachance, L., Bouffard, T., Vezeau, C., & Perreault, M. (2024). An online peer support program to improve mental health among university students: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of American College Health, 72(7), 2001-2013.
Idris, N. (2024). Peer-to-Peer Support in Mathematics Education: Its Effectiveness for College Students in Mindanao State University-Sulu. Journal of Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 2(7), 99-108.
Kondo, M., & Kato, H. (2024). The Impact of the Peer Support Programme on Interpersonal Relationship, Self-Esteem, General Health Questionnaire and Adaptation Scale for School Environments on Six Spheres among Japanese High School Pupils. European Journal of Psychology and Educational Research, 7(1), 1-10.
Pointon-Haas, J., Waqar, L., Upsher, R., Foster, J., Byrom, N., & Oates, J. (2024). A systematic review of peer support interventions for student mental health and well-being in higher education. BJPsych open, 10(1), e12.
Purnomo, P., Suciati, S., Herminaju, K., & Fayakun, F. (2025). Effect of Peer Support Group on Academic Stress Among Grade II Vocational High School Adolescents. Jurnal Penelitian Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Kesehatan Nahdlatul Ulama Tuban, 7(1).
Shea, M., & Nguyen, K. K. (2025). Development and Evaluation of a Strengths-Focused Peer-Led Support Program for Young University Mothers. Journal of Prevention and Health Promotion, 6(1), 3-30.
Shepherd, H. A., van den Berg, C., Reed, N., Caron, J. G., Yeates, K. O., & Emery, C. A. (2025). The Buddy Program: High school students inform the design of a school-based peer support program for concussion. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 35(7), 1418-1433.
Sutrisno, S., Ausat, A. M., Diawati, P., & Suherlan, S. (2024). Do Entrepreneurship Education and Peer Groups Promote Students' Entrepreneurial Intention During Covid-19 Pandemic? The Mediating Role of Entrepreneurial Mindset. Calitatea, 25(201), 181-195.
Ulmanen, S., Tikkanen, L., & Pyhältö, K. (2024). Sense of relatedness and study engagement as mediators between students’ peer support and life satisfaction. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 39(3), 2603-2617.
Zhang, T., Zhao, J., & Shen, B. (2024). The influence of perceived teacher and peer support on student engagement in physical education of Chinese middle school students: mediating role of academic self-efficacy and positive emotions. Current Psychology, 43(12), 10776-10785.
Zuccoli, F., Annovazzi, C., Meneghetti, D., Culotta, V., & Trivigno, A. (2025). The Group Dimension in Peer Tutoring Projects: From Direct Experience to Training. The Case Study of the Tutoring and Orientation Service at the University Of Milano-Bicocca. In EDULEARN25 Proceedings (pp. 3180-3184). IATED.