The Effect of Work on a Student’s GPA

Group Seven: Braedon Kantola, Tyler Bond, Yvette Schlee

EDT 180D

Mr. Lewallen

25 April 2018
 Group Seven; The Effect of Work on a Student’s GPA

The topic that our research group chose to analyze is whether or not the amount of work a

college student works outside of school has an influence on their GPA. Some of the questions

that we asked students in our data collection survey are: what year of study are you currently,

what college are they currently enrolled in, what is their gender, what is their current GPA, and

what is the number of credit hours they are taking. To gather these responses, we utilized a

google forms document to collect data for these survey questions and inn total our team received

95 responses to our questions. In the figures located below, our team created four different charts

to be able to illustrate the correlation between gender and GPA, gender and the number of hours

worked, class and GPA, and the class and number of hours worked.

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 Group Seven; The Effect of Work on a Student’s GPA

Figure 1: Gender and GPA

When comparing gender to GPA there is a dramatic spike in the amount of females that

have a GPA greater than 2.6, this could partly be due to the fact that when compared to the

males, there is a greater ratio of females to males in the results of our survey. Even though there

are more females, the difference (percent) between males having the greater than 2.6 GPA is still

less in comparison of the females. As a result, this graph would look to show that overall the

females at Arizona State University have a higher overall GPA compared to that of the males at

the same university. As aforementioned, this is a very likely result though since there were a

larger amount (76 versus 19) of female respondents.

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 Group Seven; The Effect of Work on a Student’s GPA

Figure 2: Gender and Amount of Hours Worked

Comparing gender to hours worked through college tends to show that a higher

percentage of males and females are working less than 30 hours per week. This result was what

our team expected because we assume that most of the students are taking full time classes and

thus may not have as much time outside of school to work more than 30 hours per week. By

working less than 30 hours, that would enable them to keep up with the demand of the university

level classes. This comparison also shows that there are considerably more females than males

who work and whose hours are less than 30 as well. Overall, this does not surprise our research

team because as students we can attest that it is extremely difficult to hold a full-time job while

attending a university.

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 Group Seven; The Effect of Work on a Student’s GPA

Figure 3: Class and GPA

Instantly, when looking at the comparison of class and GPA one can see that the greatest

amount of students in our survey are freshmen, which in fact make a little over 50% of the

overall results. Also, a worthy note is that for each class the majority of students have a GPA that

is above 2.6, even if the sample size for other classes from sophomores to graduates are smaller

in comparison to the freshman class. Additionally, when looking at the graph, though the amount

of juniors are low, they have the best percentage of students that hold a GPA above 2.6 (besides

that of the graduate students obviously). Lastly, when looking at all the classes, the EDT class

respondents covers all ranges of classes with the exception of having zero post-baccalaureate

students.

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 Group Seven; The Effect of Work on a Student’s GPA

Figure 4: Class and Amount of Hours Worked

After comparison of class level and hours worked, it clear to see that the freshman

dominates the sample size, but every class has a majority of students who do not work more than

31 hours per week. This can be seen as a result of the level of work required for college course

work that takes away from a person's ability to work, no matter what level of study. The largest

discrepancies are seen in the freshman and sophomore classes, a result seen since they are the

ones who are the newest to the college level and thus may require more adjustment time in order

to figure out how to handle class work before they increase their hours worked. This is expected

because transitioning into college level courses from high school takes time to gauge their time

management abilities. Lastly, something that is noteworthy is the fact that our survey shows that

the junior class are the largest amount of students (percentage wise) that work over 31 hours per

week, and we assume that this is because by then the juniors are either ready to take on more

responsibilities, have more bills to pay, or are enrolled in a paid internship position.

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 Group Seven; The Effect of Work on a Student’s GPA

After looking at our data and research that we conducted, our team had come to

numerous conclusions. We came to realize that across both males and females, these two groups

often held a GPA higher than that of 2.6 while working less than 30 hours outside of school. Out

of the 12 respondents that work greater than 31 hours a week, eight of them have a GPA higher

than 2.6 and four of the individuals have a GPA lower than 2.5. This suggest that working

greater than 31 hours a week has affected approximately 33% of the 12 individuals; however,

there may be other factors that are affecting the student’s GPA that were not accounted for in this

survey such as access to tutors, food security, life at home, etc. Our team does suggest that more

research needs to be conducted regarding this topic, but with the data that we have recorded, the

amount of work hours has some sort of influence on student’s GPA. Even though the influence

may affect only a small portion of the respondents, it is still significant to state that four out of 12

individuals had a GPA less than 2.5 while working greater than 31 hours a week. Some other

questions that have come to mind in order to further research the topic is to include a more

diverse range of questions to see whether there are other factors affecting the four students that

had less than a 2.5 GPA. Some questions that we could possibly include would consist of asking

about the student’s home life and whether or not they have access to a safe place to complete

their homework, if the student has sufficient resources in order to succeed in their studies, or if

they are facing issues of food insecurity that take away from their ability to study, etc. If our

team was to change anything about our research, we would add additional questions to

encompass a wider range of possibilities that may/may not be affecting the student’s GPA. By

doing so, our team would be able to better understand whether it is the student’s work schedule

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 Group Seven; The Effect of Work on a Student’s GPA

that is affecting their GPA or if it is something else that is keeping them from succeeding.

Overall, the research our team has conducted led us to believe that work schedules may have a

small influence on an individual’s GPA, but this has raised multiple questions that could be used

to further investigate this topic.