The Effects of Alcohol and How It Affects College Students GPA - Literature review Example

The Effects of Alcohol and How It Effects College GPA A great number of teenagers engage in alcohol consumption, a habit which aggravates when most get into college. Alcoholism is one of the most challenging factors amongst college student and is associated with deeds such as sexual assault, property damage, academic underperformance or failure, and deaths. Most studies done to find the effects of alcohol on performance have shown that college students who engage in episodic drinking attain lower grades as compared to student who do not drink. This is because alcohol is perceived to tamper with memory making it hard for students to remember information acquired before taking alcohol. Additionally, after taking alcohol, it results in “hang-overs,” which results in time wastage since student are unable to concentrate before they recover from the effects of alcohol. Additionally, students who are binge drinkers tend to disregard academics; exhibit poor school attendance habits, concentrate less in class and end up performing poorly in tests and projects. However, other studies have shown no correlation between alcohol use and academic performance of college student. Instead the studies have attributed the differences in academic performance to other factors such as living environment. Alcoholism is also associated with other aspects, such as sleeping habits, aggression, failure to attend school and aggression. Most studies show that there is a convincing relationship between alcohol consumption academic performance, and aggressiveness. This paper will focus on the effects of alcohol and how it affects college students GPA making use of findings from previous studies on the relationship between alcohol use and academic performance and other behaviours of college students. Studies have been done among students by using different groups comprising of individuals given alcohol, placebo or non-alcoholic drinks, anti-placebo or persons given alcoholic drinks but made to believe that the drinks were anti-alcoholic and a last group of sober students. Such studies proved that the group given alcohol demonstrated higher levels of aggressiveness and other behavioral changes followed by the anti-placebo group (Giancola, 2002). Most studies have thus concluded that alcohol has direct on college students behaviors. However, a lot of controversy exists on whether alcohol has any direct effects on academic performance. According to Giancola (2002), factor such as one’s background and environment determines the probability of engaging in aggressive behavior after consuming alcohol since they define ones manner of coping with drunkenness. Study by Giancola (2002), and another by Powell, William, and Wechsler (2002) agreed that there is a connection between alcohol consumption with tumbling performance amongst students, which could be direct by affecting intellectual capability or indirectly by affecting students’ schooling and study habits. Giancola (2002, p. 130) argues, “Executive functioning mediates the alcohol-aggression relation in that acute alcohol intoxication disrupts executive functioning, which then heightens the probability of aggression”. He further concedes that severe consumption of alcohol increases chances of aggressiveness in medium and low more than in high executive functioning persons and affects study patterns amongst student. Porter and Pryor (2007), argue that college students overindulge in episodic drinking which makes them aggressive. Giancola disputes this and argues that alcohol is “less likely to engender aggression” since “alcohol will not facilitate any behaviors for which there is no psychological predisposition” (Giancola, 2002, p. 132). This suggests that alcohol has no direct effects on student’s behaviors. Powell, Williams, and Wechsler (2002) posit that impairment of perceptive capacity resulting from alcohol consumption influences academic performance deleteriously, which is contrary to Giancola’s (2002) findings that acute alcohol does not unswervingly cause direct effects but interacts with other variables to cause impaired brain functioning resulting in aggression or decreased performance. Porter and Pryor (2007, p. 457), claim that “males are more likely than female to report 3 or 4 or more occasions of heavy drinking, whereas females at women’s college are less likely to report heavy episodic drinking compared with females at research universities or coed colleges.” Their study results showed that 30% of females from women’s colleges indulge in episodic drinking while 56% males from coed college are episodic drinkers. Porter and Pryor (2007, p. 458), study showed that “students who reported drinking heavily tended to have lower GPAs” as compared to non-drinker students irrespective of their diversities in gender, racial, marital or year of study. Porter and Pryor (2007) study showed that students who engaged in drinking showed less participation in collaborative learning and are thus more likely to register low GPAs. Both male and female students’ academic performance was affected negatively by heavy episodic drinking with the effects being worse in females especially those in research universities. Porter and Pryor (2007) demonstrated that increasing ones drinking led to further decrease in GPAs and that students in coed colleges tend to be heavy episodic drinkers than those in research universities with men being more drinkers that females. However, the study by Powell, Williams & Wechsler (2002) disagrees with Porter and Pryor findings since it claims that increasing alcohol consumption amongst student drinkers has little or no additional effect on their study habits or GPA performance. Additionally Pryor & Porter (2007) argue that female students in women’s college were less likely to overindulge in alcohol. Heavy drinkers from research universities portray less faculty interactions than those in coed colleges and women’s college which can be attributed to more faculty-student engagement shown in coed and women’s colleges as compare to such interactions in research universities. Paschall and Freisther (2003) did a study to determine the influence of heavy drinking, alcohol connected problems and drinking opportunities on the academic performance of college students. Like Giancola (2002), Paschall and Freister (2003) found out that heavy use of alcohol and alcohol related problems has no significant effect on students’ academic performance. Their study revealed that the college students GPA and alcohol are not related. According to Paschall and Freisther (2003) study, the heavy use of alcohol had effect on high school student’s academic performance but not on the GPA of college students. However, Paschall and Freisthler research showed that heavy drinking may affect the behavior of the students but not their performance. Singleton (2007) study on the correlation between collegiate alcohol consumption and academic performance showed that it is necessary to contemplate the college context, the interaction of college and individual factors in order to accurately determine if alcohol consumption affects academic performance. Singleton study was trying to find the credibility of previous studies that had demonstrated a negative effect of alcohol on academic performance of college which, was attributed to student differences at matriculation by some studies. Singleton’s studies involved determining the relationship between alcohol and academic performance while regulating other factors. In the study personal interview investigations were done for four succeeding semesters using randomly selected samples of students comprising of both male and female student and from different races. Just like the study by Powell, Williams, and Wechsler (2002), Singleton’s (2007) study showed that there is some correlation between alcohol consumption and academic performance. Nevertheless, Singleton attributed the effect to other factors that differ amongst students. Singleton and Amy (2009) did another study that attempted to find the relationship between alcohol consumption, academic performance, and sleep in college students. The study involved interviewing random sample of 236 students, 124 of whom were women. The interviews entailed examining the level of alcohol consumption, gender, academic class, and sleeping behaviors. Additionally, the GPA and Scholastic Aptitude Test scores of 95% of the sample were examined. The analysis of study result showed that alcohol consumption affected the duration of sleep, the timing of sleep, sleep hours. Students especially women with late sleep schedules were more likely to have daytime sleepiness. However, the study showed that gender, alcohol consumption, sleep duration, and daytime sleepiness affected academic performance. In relation to my study question, Singleton and Amy (2009) findings were similar to those of Porter and Pryor (2007) and suggested that alcohol consumption has a direct relationship with GPA. However effects of alcohol on sleep were indirect. Just like in the previous study done by Singleton (2007), the study by Singleton and Army (2009) showed that alcohol consumption among college students is related to grades attained by the students. Thombs, Olds, Bondy , Winchell, Baliunas, & Rehm (2009) study aimed at addressing the weakness of previous studies, which had suggested that there is negligible or no relationship between alcohol consumption and undergraduate academic. After tracking a randomly selected sample of 619 first year and second year students for 15 weeks, Thombs, et al, (2009) found that the magnitude of the connection between undergraduate alcohol use and academic performance is minimal. Instead, the study attributed the difference in Academic performance of undergraduate student to living environment. Another study regarding acolcohol use and academic perfomance was done by Wood, Sher, Erickson, & DeBord (1997). The aim of the study was to determine relationship between problematic alcohol use and academic problems. The assessment involved evaluation of the correlation in prospective study vs. cross-sectional study. Like the studies by Wood, Sher, Erickson, & DeBord (1997), Erickson & DeBord study assessed correlation between different factors and the academic performance. The factors examined included problematic alcohol use, academic investment, academic ability, and parental background and their effects of the overall academic performance. Wood, Sher, Erickson, & DeBord (1997) sampled 444 freshmen (mean age 18.5 years) and were assessed using a neuropsychological assessment, Diagnostic Interview Schedule, a questionnaire survey, and a diagnostic questionnaire and found out that alcohol consumption was somehow related to academic problems during freshman year of college.  Wood, Sher, Erickson, & DeBord (1997) concluded that there is a cconsiderable bivariate between problematic alcohol use and academic problems during college. However, they attributed the association to preexisting student dissimilarities on admission to college. Porter and Pryor (2007) argue that heavy drinkers spend less time in academics but more time in sports and other recreation activities, which coincides with Giancola’s findings (2002). Powell, Williams, & Wechsler (2002, p. 5) claim that “Alcohol consumption levels differ by race, marital status, religion, housing arrangements, parental drinking behavior and type of college.” Additionally, freshman students are affected more negatively by alcohol consumption than students in upper years. Powell, Williams, & Wechsler (2002) study was quite similar to Singleton’s (2007) which examined the effect of alcohol on academic performance while considering other possible determinant factors which included race, parents education and income, academic class, athletic status , and regularity of going to off‐campus parties. Additionally, Wood, Sher, Erickson, & DeBord (1997) study considered the GPA and high school class rank of 94% of the Sample. Just like Williams and Wechsler (2002) study, Singleton (2007) found out that factors such as race, parents income, academic level of study and social life such as frequency of attending parties affect the performance as well as alcohol consumption level. Singleton (2007) concluded that the quantity of alcohol consumed correlated considerably with GPA. Studies by Pryor & Porter (2007), Giancola (2002), and Powell, Williams, and Wechsler (2002) agree that reducing or eliminating alcohol intake among students result in improved performance and reduced aggressiveness. However, Giancola stresses that interventions should focus more on modifying the risk factors of alcohol consumption by educating students on effects of alcohol on behavior to reduce aggression other than emphasizing on stopping student from drinking alcohol. All the studies agree that alcohol affects behavior among students but disagree on whether the effect is direct or indirect. Additionally, there is a lot of controversy on whether alcohol use among college students affects the academic performance. Some researchers argue that alcohol has negligible or no effect on GPA while others posit that alcohol affects the students memory, study habits and school attendance hence the academic performance. There is need for more research to establish the effect of alcohol use on academic performance among college students. Conclusion The studies show that alcohol has negative direct or indirect effects on students’ behaviors and results in conducts such as aggression, changed sleeping patterns, school attendance, and reading patterns. However, there are disagreements on whether alcohol use among college students leads to reduced academic performance. Some researchers argue that it is important to consider other factors such as level of study, living environments, family background, race and gender in order to establish whether alcohol affects GPA among college students. The studies that included high school students showed that alcohol affects academic performance among high school students. This is because high school alcohol users attained lower grades than the non-users. They further agree that reducing alcohol intake or educating students on effects of alcohol to stop them from overindulgence can help improve their GPAs and reduce aggressive behaviors. From the findings in the studies analyzed, it is clear that there is need for more research to establish the impact or effect of alcohol use on the academic performance or GPA of college students. References Giancola, P. (2002). Alcohol-Related Aggression during the College Years:Theories, Risk Factors and Policy Implications. Journal Of Studies On Alcohol / Supplement No. 14, 129-139. Paschall, M., & Freisther, B. (2003, July). Does heavy drinking affect academic performance in college?  Findings from a prospective study of high achievers. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 64(4). 515-519. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier/EBSCO database. Porter, S., & Pryor, J. (2007). The perfomance, and Time UseEffects of Heavy Episodic Alcohol Use on Student Engagement, Academic. Journal of College Student Development Vol 48 No 4, 455-468. Powell, L., Williams, J., & Wechsler, H. (2002). Study Habits and the Level of Alcohol Use Among College Students. Research Paper Series, No. 19, 1-20. Singleton, R., & Amy R., (2009). Alcohol Consumption, Sleep, and Academic Performance among College Students. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 70(3): 355-63. Singleton, R., (2007). Collegiate Alcohol Consumption And Academic Performance. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Vol 68(4, 548-555. Thombs, D., Olds, S., Bondy , S., Winchell, J., Baliunas, D., & Rehm, J. (2009). Undergraduate Drinking and Academic Performance: A Prospective Investigation With Objective Measures. Journal of Studies of Alcohol and Drugs, Vol 70 Iss 5, 776-785. Wood, P., Sher, K., Erickson, D., & DeBord, K. (1997). Predicting Academic Problems In College From Freshman Alcohol Involvement. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, Vol 58(2), 200-210. Read More