Does Watching Sports Effect GPA?

Group 4: Benjamin Trivers, Lindsay Kiszczak, Brittany Fox

EDT 180B
Gary Lewallen
November 29, 2016

Does Watching Sports Effect GPA?

For most people, watching and playing sports is part of an everyday routine.
This includes busy college students who probably have many other
assignments to be completing. Although school should be a number one
priority there are always distractions and sports is one of them to many
students. When presented with this research project we were curious as to
how watching sports effects a students GPA. Our prediction was that GPA
would be lowered by watching sports because if theyre watching sports they
arent using that time to focus on school. As a group we have also had this
happen due to personal experience.

My group and I came up with five questions to survey students to find out
the answer to our question. Our first question was what year they were in
school, (Freshman, Sophomore, etc.) as well as their cumulative GPA. They
were asked if they watched sports and if so, what sports they watch. The last
question they were asked was why they watch sports. I believe that our
survey was quick and simple and was effective enough for us to gain the
proper insight to see if GPA is affected by watching sports. At the end of the
survey we had 97 responses from students. To gather this data, we used
Google Docs Form. Google Docs form was easy to work with and gave us
many options as to how we wanted to ask our questions. To finalize the

project, we used Microsoft Applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) to

Percent of
Count Yes No Yes

Percent of
No

GPA

Freshman 19
Sophomor

10

47%

53%

3.27

46

22

19

59%

41%

3.01

Junior

28

13

15

46%

54%

3.27

Senior

33%

67%

3.06

48%

52%

3.15

Average

professionalize our data and project.

The table above demonstrates the year of the student versus whether they watched sports or not.
What truly surprised me the most was the large percentage of students that did not watch sports.
2

It seems as though every class except for the sophomores have a higher population that do not
watch sports. This graph also shows the average Cumulative GPA per class as well as the average
GPA for all four classes. As you can see from the table, the sophomore class had the most
participants than any other class in our survey.

Freshman
Senior

Sophomore

Junior

31

28
46

19
This chart shows us the amount of respondents per class and as a sum. Each class is coordinated
with a different color so you can see where one ends and the next class begins. All together we
had 96 respondents for all four classes combines. In the freshman class we had 19 students
complete our survey. From the sophomore class we had 46 participants, by far the most we
received from any class. In the junior class we had 28 respondents and 3 seniors. What I liked
about this graph is that the data is easily recognizable. You can look at the graph and easily tell
that it demonstrates how many participants were in each class.

Type of Sports Watched

1
4

41
1
7
8
13

22

Football
Soccer
Other

Baseball
Volleyball

Basketball
N/A

The graph above shows the results of the question Which sports do you watch, if any? What I
found the most shocking out of this graph was such a large amount of students selected N/A for
the answer to this question. Our data shows that 41 respondents do not watch any sports no
matter what the sport. The second most popular answer as to what sports they watch was
football. After football the most popular sport watched was baseball then basketball. The sport
calculated to be watched the least was volleyball who had an unpopular vote of 1 person.

Why They Watch Sports

For Entertainment
11%

Played Sports

45%
dont like sports

44%

This graph demonstrates why the participants watch sports. They were given three options, they
played sports, for entertainment purposes, or that they do not like sports. The orange
demonstrates the For entertainment section, the blue is the played sports results, and the
gray is the I dont like sports section. Surprisingly, 44% of students chose that they do not like
sports. 43% enjoy watching sports for entertainment and 11% of respondents watch sports
because at some point they played these sports and are interested in them.

Watches Sports/GPA
3.27

0.53
0.47

3.01

0.59
0.41

Count of Yes/Total Count

GPA

3.27

0.54
0.46

3.06
0.67
0.33

Count of No/Total Count

This graph shows us a bit more information that the rest of the graphs have so far. This graph
shows us the count of each year as well as the percentage of yess and nos. along with the
average GPA of that class. What I like about this graph is that it shows you a lot of information in
an easy to read format. In just one graph it shows almost 75% of the data we received. The gray
area demonstrates their GPA and the blue and orange shows the yes and no count per class.

Does Watching Sports Effect GPA

Watches Sports (GPA = 3.14)

48% (GPA=3.13)
52%Sports
Doesnt Watch

Our last graph demonstrates the answer to our initial question, Does Watching sports effect
GPA? My group predicted that it would have a negative correlation but there truly is not enough
of a difference to truly be able to tell. The orange in this graph shows the percentage of students
that do not watch sports. The blue demonstrates the percentage o students that do watch sports.
There is only a -. 1 difference in the GPA between the two difference groups.
When looking at my data and charts I have come to the conclusion that we did not gather enough
data to truly be able to tell if watching sports affects a students GPA or not. Looking back, I
think we should have asked how many hours a week the student watches sports if they do. If I
were to do this again I would try to reach a bigger audience to try and get more results. I also feel
that the results of this survey may change due to the season. For example, many people watch the
Super Bowl or the Olympics but neglect to put that in this survey, because that does count as
watching sports.