Mandatory Draft- IMRaD

Abstract

            The relationship between academic workload and academic performance for college freshman can be important for incoming college students to understand when making decision on class loads.  To look into this, a survey was given out to 20 University of Iowa freshman.  This survey asked them to answer reveal their workloads, stress level, and academic performance.  It was found that an increase in academic workload is correlated with an increase in the level of stress experienced by the college student.  It was also found that increased stress can be associated with worse academic performance.  This might sway students from trying to load up on courses, and entice them to be careful with the amount of academic work they take on at one time.

Introduction

            College has always been known to be some of the best times of someone’s life, but also some of the most stressful.  Many studies cover the effects of partying and health on GPA, but not many studies have taken a look at the stress of college students.  Stress can have a major role in the well being in someone’s life and success in school. Because of this it is important to understand how class and studying workload affects a student’s stress level.  It also is important to know how this stress can affect performance.

            In a study performed in 2008, by the University of Minnesota, it was found that stress is the factor that has the biggest effect on the GPA’s of students in college (Marcotty).  It is known that stress is a huge factor in academic performance; however there are many different sources of stress for college students, especially freshman.  There is a gap in this research because it is still unknown what things people can control that will allow them to be less stressful and more successful.  A factor that plays a large role in the stress of many college students is the workload of class and studying.  But no one has looked into how the work that is put in and required for classes can affect the stress, and eventually the grades, of students.

            To fill this gap in knowledge, a new study surveyed 20 college freshmen at the University of Iowa.  In this survey they were asked about their workload in the classroom and time spent studying or doing homework, along with how they rated their stress level and their academic performance.  This new research will give an insight to the relationship between the workload in hours spent on school to the academic performance.

Methods

Participants:

            20 college students from the University of Iowa participated in this study.  All of these students were freshmen.

Data Sources & Procedures:

            The data was collected by handing out surveys on paper.  Surveys were anonymous and required students to input their semester hours and how many hours, on average, they spent studying in a week per semester hour.  Also, students were asked to rate their stress level and academic performance on a scale provided in each question.

Data Analysis:

            To gain the conclusions from this, the data was analyzed for the correlation between the work load and stress levels of the University of Iowa freshmen.  The number of hours spent in class was compared to the stress level.  The number of hours spent studying per week was compared to the stress level of the students.  Also, the total number of hours on academics (time in class + time spent studying/on homework) was analyzed with the stress levels of students.

Results

            Graph 1 indicates that the amount of time spent on academics each week can have an impact on the stress levels of college freshmen.  As seen in the bar graph, the stress level reported by students increases from little stress to moderate to very stressed. With every increase in the workload, the stress level increases as well.  The time a college academic workload consumes every week seems to be correlated to the amount of stress that college freshmen feel.  This connects workloads to stress felt by college freshmen.

Graph 1: The average academic workload per week for all the students in each of the stress level choices.

            Table 1 indicates the academic performance, on average, of the students in each level of stress. The average grade performance shows that lower stress is correlated with a higher academic performance.  The researchers did this by assigning a number to each grade level.  Students ranked their academic performance as A, B, C, D, F.  The researchers assigned 4 points to A, 3 points to B, 2 points to C, etc.  The freshmen who reported being very stressed only had a 2 point average (C average). The freshmen with little stress reported a 3.53 average, which is between an A- and a B+ average. This can explain the relationship between the effects of stress on academic performance.  Through stress, the connection between workload and academic performance can be drawn.

Table 1: Displays the average grade received by students that report each of the stress levels.

	Avg. Grade
little stress (n=7)	3.528571429
moderate stress (n=11)	3.363636364
very stressed (n=2)	2

Discussion

            The results of this study tend to resemble the results from the University of Minnesota.  Much like in the previous study, it is shown one again that stress has an impact on the academic performance of college students, and specifically freshman as this new study shows.  Also, this study shows the connection between workload and academic performance.  It is able to show this connection, by showing how an increased workload can increase stress, and this stress in turn can impact a person’s academic performance.

            One potential problem in this study is that this study does not record or acknowledge any other factors that could lead t stress.  Academic workload is not the only thing that can lead to an increased stress.  To try and compensate for this, the survey is taken from a relatively large sample.  This will help because many different people will have many things going on but the one thing known to be the same is the stress level.  And by taking the average workload, it is hoped that any reasons other than workload would not show through in the data.  However, the data could be affected by these outside stress factors.

            The implications of these findings are for college freshman and I believe could be applied to all college students.  By increasing workload in academics, on can create more stress for oneself.  This can impact many areas not focused on in this study, but importantly, as pointed out by the data, it can impact academic performance.  This information will help college freshman consider how many semester hours they wish to take, knowing that more semester hours leads to a larger workload, which is correlated to worse academic performance.