Group 1: Elliot Muhlenfeld, Cody Adams, Olivia Ghirdan

EDT 180D

Gary Lewallen

11 April 2018

What is the Relationship Between the Number of Hours a Student Works and their GPA?

We decided to research the relationship between the number of hours a student works and

how it affects their GPA. Many student enrolled in college have jobs and we wanted to see if

having a job while in college affects a students performance in school. The questions we asked in

our surveys were related to the participant’s gender, college within ASU, grade level, credits,

GPA, hours worked per week and in their opinion if working while in school had a negative,

positive or no affect on their performance. To get the data from our research question we made a

Google Docs form and had our classmates answer the questions we made. We also had professor

send out the form to other students so we would have set of larger data. In total we received 159

responses.

Our first three charts just show the basic data we gathered for our most important

questions, those being the respondent’s GPA, the number of hours they work per week, and how

many credits they’re enrolled in currently. As shown in the chart, the GPA of our respondents is

fairly high, with an average of 3.26. Further, 105 out of 159, or about 66% of respondents

reported a GPA of 3.1 or higher, while only 6 respondents (about 3.7%) reported a GPA of 2.0 or

lower.
 The next chart shows how many hours our respondents work per week. Since this can

vary depending on the job, we asked our respondents to answer with their best estimate of how

many hours they work in a typical week. The average and median number of hours worked was

11.73 and 5.5, respectively, but perhaps more telling is the mode number: 0. 74 (46.5%) of our

respondents replied saying they work 0 hours per week, meaning that they do not have a job.

Also worth noting, 16 respondents indicated that they work over 30 hours per week, which

seems like more than a full-time college student would be able to reasonably handle. One
respondent even claimed to work 60 hours per week, and it is doubtful whether this would be

physically possible.
 The final “basic” chart shows the number of ASU credit hours our respondents are

enrolled in. The vast majority of responses were between 11 and 20 credits, with 3 people

indicating they take between 6 and 10. One person indicated they take between 0 and 5, and one

person indicated they take 21 or over. This means that at least 12 out of the 16 respondents who

work over 30 hours per week are also either full-time ASU students, or just one credit shy of

being full-time, as the cutoff is 12 credits.

Our first comparison chart examines the hours our respondents work per week and their

gender. Overall, the numbers for females were higher in every category, as there were more

female respondents overall. However, it is interesting to note that the difference in number of
males and females is the smallest in the “31+” range. Additionally, the number of males who

responded that they work over 30 hours was more than the number who responded that they

work 21 to 30, 11 to 20, or 1 to 10. In other words, according to our survey, if a male has a job,

they most commonly have one that they work at for more than 30 hours per week.

Our second comparison chart gauges respondents’ opinions on whether or not their job

affects their GPA compared with their class level. Most of the respondents were either Freshmen

or Sophomores, and in both instances, the majority responded that their job doesn’t affect their

academics (note: this also includes those who don’t work). Of those that do believe their work

affects their GPA, the number of those who believe the effect is positive is pretty close to the
number of those who perceive the effect to be negative, but slightly more believe their work has

a negative effect on their GPA. While this is not true for seniors or Graduates, only 10

respondents total fall into one of these categories. Overall, students’ perceptions seem mixed on

the issue, but the data of their actual GPA should lead to a stronger conclusion.

Our final comparison charts was made to see if the amount of hours worked affected

students GPA. The maximum amount of students who worked were 60 and the average amount

of hours worked within the 60 students was 11.73. The average GPA within the 60 students was

3.26 which was right below the median GPA within the students which was 3.3. Even though the

students say working does not affect their GPA, the average GPAs earned are below the median.

It appears that students might be slightly affecting their GPA by working while in school.