A single study has documented an association between peers' educational aspirations and adolescents' levels of school engagement. Murdock et al., (2000) found that adolescents who perceived their 7th grade peers as having higher levels of educational aspirations tended to demonstrate higher levels of academic effort in 9th grade, including greater frequency of doing homework and attending school, than those who perceived their peer as having lower levels of educational aspirations. This study examined a sample of 238 mostly African American and Caucasian students in the mid-Atlantic region, and included controls for adolescents' levels of achievement and self-concept in 7th grade, as well as key variables indicating relationships with teachers in 7th grade. The authors did not examine the actual aspirations of the youth's peers, but rather their perceptions of their peers' aspirations, hence it is difficult to tell for certain whether this finding is truly an effect of having peers with higher aspirations. Further research is necessary to replicate the findings of this study, as well as to determine whether a similar relationship is found when assessing the aspirations of adolescents' peers directly, rather than adolescents' perceptions of their peers' aspirations.