DigitMemo.com

A recent paper shows video games do hurt GPAs.

The paper is being published by the National Bureau of Economic Research that contains a careful study of the correlations between students’ use of their time and academic achievement. It also carries a detailed dissection of the use of two statistical methods to examine the raw data produced during the study. But, in the end, it will probably go down in history based on the headlines it generates, which are likely to be along the lines of “Video games hurt GPAs.”

With the most obvious time sinks eliminated, the study needed an external factor that influenced study time. It found it in video games, specifically by dividing the students based on whether their roommates had brought gaming rigs to school. About half of the males and a quarter of the females fell into this group. But the impact of access to gaming didn’t depend on the students’ gender: those with video games in their rooms spent about two-thirds of an hour less on academic work per day out of a mean of 3.5 hours of study time. That decrease closely tracked the amount of time that the students reported spending gaming, suggesting that there was a direct transfer of effort between the two activities.

With an independent variable in hand, the authors turned to the student grades, adjusting them for demographics and past achievement. The males with access to games saw their GPAs drop by 0.24 points, while coeds whose roommates came with gaming rigs took a 0.13 hit. That allowed the authors to calculate the impact of studying, with an hour per day producing a mean GPA increase of 0.36 points. The authors appear satisfied that this provides an answer to a major question that lingers over their field.