Does Living Off Campus Affect Your GPA?

Group 4: Nathan Carr, Scot Johnson, and Juan Rojas Spring 2017

EDT 180C Problem Solving Using Digital Technology Applications

Professor Gary Lewallen

April 25, 2017

Does Living Off Campus Affect Your GPA?

 Does Living Off Campus Affect Your GPA?
Group 4

Does living on campus affect your GPA as a college student? Many of you wonder what

other factors may contribute to this question. The number of hours spent on a job, the number of

hours spend studying, and the percentage of time youre distracted or multitasking while

studying may all contribute to your GPA. In this report, we will not only answer the question, we

will provide statistics according to a Google Doc Survey Form we performed by 125 Arizona

State University students, Freshmen through Seniors, in the attempt to reveal a correlation

between grade point average and holding a job.

Viewing the basic data, we received surveys from 92 females and 33 males. Most

responses, 65, came from Freshmen, 25 from Sophomores, 23 from Juniors, and 8 from Seniors.

What is your gender What is your grade level?

8; 6%

33; 26% 23; 18%

65; 52%

29; 23%
92; 74%

Freshman Sophomore
Male Female Junior Senior

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Overall, 55 people who responded to the survey live on campus while 70 do not live on campus.

Do you live off campus?

55
70

Yes No

Out of those 125 surveyed, 74 or 59.2% of the people revealed that they have a job, while the

remaining 41 or 40.8% of the people revealed that they do not have a job.

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Do you have a job?

51
74

Yes No

Concerning the amount of hours worked, 13.5% of the people surveyed responded that they

worked between 1 to 10 hours per week; 37,8% of the people surveyed worked between 10 to 20

hours per week, 29.7% worked between 20 to 30 hours, 14.9% worked 30 to 40 hours a week,

only 1.4% worked 40 to 50 hours, while 2.7% of the people surveyed work over 51 hours in a

whole week.

How many hours a week do you work?

12 10
11

22 28

1 to 10 11 to 20 21 to 30 31 to 40 41 to 50 51 to 60

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Taking into consideration the GPA, out of the 125 surveys submitted, only 1.6% fell between the

range of 1.0 through 1.59, 4% fell between 1.6 through 2.09, 12.8% fell between 2.10 through

2.59, 24.8% fell between 2.60 and 3.09, 26.4% fell between 3.10 and 3.59, 25.6% reported their

GPA to be between 3.60 and 4.0. Finally, 4.8% had their GPA to be at 4.01 or higher.

What is your GPA?

35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0

What percentage of study time do you believe you are distracted or multitasking?
30
25
20
15
10
5
0

What percentage of these

students reported their living conditions to be distracting? According to our survey, 60.8% said

that their living conditions were not distracting, while the remaining 39.2% said that their living

conditions were distracting. The breakdown of those claiming to have a distracting environment

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are seen to the right. A majority of students felt they were distracted or multitasking 20 to 50

percent of the time.

We also decided to ask the students how many hours they study outside of class. A vast majority,

74 students, responded by saying they studied 0-5 hours a week, followed by 30 students who

study 6 to 10 hours a week. From the 6 to 10 range, the statistics drop off fast with only 9 people

studying 11 to 15 hours and a total of 12 people reported study habits of more than 16 hours per

week.

How many hours do you study per week?

80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0 to 5 6 to 10 11 to 15 16 to 20 21 to 25 26 to 30

Once we gathered our basic data we analyzed the data and made some comparisons in an attempt

to see if there was any correlation between grades, employment, hours studying outside class,

and distractions. First let us review grade point average and how many hours a student worked in

a week. The scatter plot chart below shows most respondents who worked spent between 10 and

40 hours a week at their job, while the average grade point average of these students range

between 2.5 and 4.0. Three students said they worked 50 or more hours a week. We believe these

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numbers were entered in error through misunderstanding the question or perhaps they indicate

the need for a follow up question, such as asking how many credits the student was taking.

What is your GPA? vs. How many hours a week do you work?
4.5

3.5

2.5
What is your GPA? What is your GPA?
2

1.5

0.5

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

How many hours a week do you work?

Another comparison highlighted was grade point average, hours spent and work, hours spent

studying, and how distracted a student felt. This final comparison did not prove a strong

correlation between distraction and grades. On the contrary, those claiming to study the fewest

hours also replied that they were the least distracted and had low work hours. Perhaps due to

their low distraction level and less work stress they are more able to focus while studying. Only 7

of 125 respondents are earning less than a 2.5 GPA, and 70 of 55 students live off campus. These

facts led us to believe there is no great impact to where you live and grades.

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Work, Study, and Distractions

80 74

70
60

50

40 % Distracted
30
28
Number of Students 30 25 27 Study Hours
22 22
Hours Worked
20 14
10 9 9 11 11
10 6 7
4 5 32 2 2
1
0

Data Range

What is the correlation between living on campus and grade point average? According to our

results, we found that there is an effect on the students GPA. We took the average GPAs of

students living on campus and we compared them to the average of students living off campus.

We found that the average GPA of students living on campus was 3.2965, while the average GPA

of students living off campus resulted to be 3.1143. When comparing, the amount of hours

worked with their GPA, to our surprise, we found no correlation in the data. This means that the

hours worked, does not affect the students GPA significantly. However, we did find out the there

is a difference of .1822 in the GPA in favor of those living on campus, on average.

What couldve been done better or modified? If we wanted to expand the research, we

couldve had added at least 500 more respondents. More completed surveys would allow our

responses to be more accurate and give us a better chance to answer the question. The difference

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in GPA is not as significant as we initially imagined, therefore we need a larger audience. Also,

we could have limited or required an even amount of responses per grade level, as well have

equal or similar responses from males or females. Lastly we could have expanded out survey to

include more follow up questions such as asking how many credits a student is taking or, since a

majority of Freshmen replied, how many lowed level and upper level classed a person is taking.

Overall we found little correlation between living on campus and having a higher or lower GPA.