Effects of Hours Spent on Facebook on GPA - Research Paper Example

? Research project Statistics research paper Effects of Hours Spent on Facebook on GPA Introduction This research seeks to investigate to what extentsocial media influences academic performance. To achieve this broad aim this study focuses on how hours spent on the popular media site, Facebook, affects a person’s GPA. The growing importance of social media in modern society calls for greater investigation into the depth and extent of impact the use of the media impacts on the way people behave with regard to other activities in their lives. Over the last few years, the debate on the impact of social media has grown in magnitude. A considerable number of studies have examined the way in which social media affects academic performance of students. For instance, according to studies by Mathew et al. (2011) students in college spend more than 30 minutes on Facebook, while they spend just about 15 minutes in other social sites. This phenomenon raises pertinent questions calling for empirical investigation into the data. The same study also made the revelation that the use in social Facebook had conspicuous variations with regard to course of study, where social science majors made greater use of the social network utility in comparison to other students. Interesting aspects of the use of social media and academic performance are noticeable in studies questioning the relationship between social media use and the type of mobile device (Antone, 2010). The study was set on testing claims that students with smartphones tend to spend more time on social media sites than their fellow students. The claim was found valid after empirical examination, and even went further to suggest that students with greater access to social media sites might perform markedly better in social projects in comparison to their counterparts, given their wider exposure to similar situations through Facebook and Twitter (Davis et al., 2011). This particular aspect hinting at a possible relationship between academic performance and time spent on Facebook is of great interest and relevance in this study. Methodology section The participants for this survey came from a diverse group of individuals with widely differing backgrounds. The total number of participants partaking in the research is 62, who come from a multiplicity of backgrounds. The sample includes people of different gender, lifestyle choices, age groups, career and occupations, educational levels, and social associations. This study forms part of a larger study, which seeks to establish the relationship between different aspects in people’s life and psychological factors such as self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and attachment style. Procedures The data’s collection was through self-administration in a series of questions assuming a number of forms. A few questions were open-ended, while others were closed-ended. For instance, in the data for the two variables used in this research, two open-ended questions were posed: ‘how many hours do you spend on Facebook every day?’, and ‘what is your current CSUN GPA if applicable?’ respectively. A significant number of survey questions were collected using ranks, primarily based on Likert scale. Design This research seeks to establish the relationship between the number of hours spent on Facebook and the performance in GPA. Time spent on Facebook is the EV (Exploratory Variable), while the GPA is the RV (Response Variable). The basic design of the survey involves 62 fully filled survey questionnaires on issues of interest for this research. The participants gave their GPA scores and also recorded the average amount of time they spent on Facebook every day. Through the analysis of the data using the statistical package SPSS, to test the claim that Facebook use affects academic performance. With statistical tools such as ANOVA, it is possible to test the significance of the difference between academic GPA scores and length of time a person spends on Facebook every day. Graphical tools also aid in exploring this subject at length to come up with a more conclusive and veritable view of the relationship between the two variables. Results The analysis was set to investigate the hypothesis that length of use of Facebook significantly affects a student’s GPA. Using ANOVA analysis at 95% level of significance, the following results were obtained. ANOVA table for GPA and Facebook use Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Between Groups 16.572 9 1.841 .732 .678 Within Groups 130.892 52 2.517 Total 147.464 61 If the length that a person spent on Facebook had an impact on the academic performance, represented by GPA level, the computed value of F would be smaller than the table value of F. From the results above, generated using the statistical package SPSS; the computed F (0.732) is greater than the actual value of F (0.678) at 95% level of significance. Therefore, spending more time on Facebook does not have a negative impact on the grades and performance of the students. For further testing of this observation, the following cross-correlation graph was obtained with regard to the two sets of data. The table shows how length of time spent on Facebook relates to the grade a student achieves in their GPA. The two parallel lines on either side of the curve indicate the confidence limit at 95% level of confidence. None of the values exceeds the significance limit, further confirming our earlier observation that there is little correlation between academic performance and the length of time a person spends on Facebook. The table below shows the way students perform with regard to the amount of time they spend on Facebook in minutes every day. Given our hypothesis, which is based on claims that Facebook negatively affects academic performance, the trend in academic performance is quite interesting. If the perception that students spending more time on Facebook had lower performance were tenable, the bars would show a gradual rise from the first bar to the last. However, the trend implied by the bar graph shows a contradictory trend. Students with higher amounts of time spent on Facebook appear to perform considerably better than students who spent just a few minutes on Facebook. The analysis also made use of correlation to establish the significance of the association between Facebook and GPA. The results in the table below indicate are from SPSS, which also flags any significant correlation values. The table shows that the correlation between GPA and time spent on Facebook is not statistically significant. The findings validate our earlier observations about the relationship between Facebook use and performance of students with the use of GPA. Correlations between GPA and time spent on Facebook at 95% GPA Facebook Time Spearman's rho GPA 1.000 .047 Facebook Time .047 1.000 Discussion The above analysis has unveiled that the perceived relationship between length of time of Facebook use and academic performance measured with the use of GPA has no scientific basis. The data and the tables show a very weak relationship between GPA and time spent on Facebook by students. College students with significantly higher amount of time dedicated to the use of Facebook did not perform markedly worse than those who had less contact with the social media site. While the study may have limitations with regard to scope given that the sample was from a highly homogeneous of a group of students, the result are highly consistent with those collected in earlier studies, which found no empirical basis for the claims that Facebook use had any impact on academic performance. Since the impact of use of Facebook was unapparent in this study, it might be possible that other factors play a role in the way the two factors interact, and merit research in future studies, for instance, social media use and type of mobile device (Antone, 2010). References: Antone, G. (2010). Social Network Use by Smartphone Jumps. Information Week. Retrieved on May 18, 2012 from http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableAricleSrc.jhtml. Davis, C, Deil-Amen, R, Rios-Aguilar, C, and Canche, M. (2011). Social Media in Higher Learning. The center for study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona. Pp. 2-4 Mathew, S, Amy, V, Andie, B, and Stephanie, W. (2011). Getting Social: The impact of Social Networking Usage on Grades among College Students. ASBSS. 18(1) 859-864 Read More