Running head: WRITTEN REPORT 1

Written Report 1 GPA and Possible Influential Variables Brittany Garcia HSCI 315

Running head: WRITTEN REPORT 1 GPA and Possible Influential Variables Introduction The lives of students today are more complex and busy than ever before. With work, studying, socializing and numerous additional activities, the concern that then stems from this is: are these extra activities affecting academic performance? For this study, the purpose was to determine if certain factors (i.e. hours of work per day, hours

of study per day, and hours of electronic entertainment per day) had an effect on Grade Point Average (GPA)a measure of academic performance. Grade Point Average for this study was measured on a 4.0 scale. Upon examining a similar study which used several measures including time spent on academic activities and time spent working, the results were contrary to what would be expected (Nonis & Hudson, 2006). This surprising conclusion was what influenced the subject of this studyto determine if similar results could be found among a group of health science statistics students at California State University, San Bernardino. The hypothesis tested was that the hours spent studying, working, and using electronic entertainment would have a significant influence on GPA. In order to assess the significance of these variables on GPA, tests of correlation, regression and comparison of group means were conducted. Methods The data gathered were from a sample of 45 students in a health science statistics course at California State University, San Bernardino. The students were given a survey that contained questions related to demographics, work schedule, health

Running head: WRITTEN REPORT 1 behaviors, and academic assessment. Their responses were put into the IBM SPSS program to run statistical analyses across variables. The variables used to determine level of significance were hours of work per day, hours of study each day, and hours of electronic entertainment per day. The criteria used to define significance were p0.05.

The first test performed on these variables was descriptive statistics to determine if the distribution for each set of data was normal. The criteria used to define normality include mean, median, and mode values that are approximately equivalent; no significant skewness or kurtosis; and a visual analysis of a histogram for each variable. Following this, a nonparametric Spearmans Rho correlation was run to account for variables with a skewed distribution. The interpretation for the r value was as follows: r greater than 0.7 or less than -0.7 was a moderate to strong association; r between +/0.3 to 0.7 was a weak to moderate association; r between +/- 0.3 had weak to no association. The next test conducted was a simple linear regression for each variable, with GPA as the dependent variable. The interpretation for the R2 value was as follows: R2 greater than 0.5 was a moderate to strong association; R2 between 0.1 and 0.5 was a weak to moderate association; R2 less than 0.1 had weak to no association. The final test performed was an ANOVA test for equality of variances. After all of the tests were conducted, the results were compared to those of the similar study previously mentioned.

Running head: WRITTEN REPORT 1 Results

TABLE 1

Descriptives Mean Median Mode Std. Deviation Range Min Max

Hrs of work/day 4.10 5.00 0.00 2.75 8.50 0.00 8.50

Hrs of study/day

Hrs of electronic entertainment/day 2.82 1.63 3.00 1.50 3.00 2.00 1.61 8.00 0.00 8.00 1.18 4.50 0.00 4.50

TABLE 2
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level

Nonparametric Correlations: Spearman's Rho Hrs of work/day GPA Correlation Coefficient Sig. (2-tailed) N -0.379* 0.01 45 Hrs of study/day -0.095 0.534 45 Hrs of electronic entertainment/day -0.296* 0.048 45

From the descriptive analysis (Table 1), the distributions for all of the tested variables deviated from normal. Upon running a nonparametric correlation (Table 2), GPA and hours of work per day had a significant association (p0.05) with r= -0.379. GPA and hours of electronic entertainment per day also had a significant association (p0.05) with r= -0.296. The simple linear regression showed only one variable with significancehours of work per day, with R2=0.146 (p0.05). The predicted linear regression equation for hours of work per day in relation to effect on GPA is as follows: GPA=3.338-0.066(hours worked).