STUDENT STUDIES

Statement of Problem & Background Research:

Our study topic concerns the difficulty of the class compared to the amount of time spent on out-of-class work. We spent time searching the Internet for similar studies. We used different search engines such as Yahoo and Microsoft. We entered phrases and words that we thought might aid in producing material for this topic. Luckily we were informed of an education-based website for Eric Digest. This site provided us with similar studies; however, none were exactly what we needed. The studies provided us with an idea of what has been studied and why. There were not any actual numbers other than a handful of percentages.

The studies that were most closely related were on time spent on homework versus quality of education. At first it was difficult to control certain unsaid factors. They continued on to give certain conditions that were found favorable for students learning. One of these conditions is that homework should vary from practice homework to preparation homework and extension homework. The practice is to help the information become learned by the student. The preparation homework is to give background on the material and prepare for any type of test and the extension homework is to tie the information into everyday use--reasons why it is important to learn the material.

Many comparisons were made, in the one study between private schools and public schools, concerning the amount of time spent on homework. For both high school and elementary students private schools assigned about forty minutes more homework per week than the public schools did. It was said to be difficult to compare schools and students because of the variation in sex, race, and creed. However, it was said that white males spent the least amount of time on homework followed by white females and then Blacks and Hispanics spent the most time on homework.

Since our study does not concern performance and homework rather the difficulty, few comparisons will be made against these studies. These studies do, however, give us a good idea of what to be aware of when we make inferences about our data.

Raw data:

Numbers shown are amounts of time spent studying per night in minutes.

Reg.Eng.10
0
0
0
20
60
5
120
15
30
10
30
15
30
30
30
30
15
30
35
45
0
30
0
0
60
30
25
0
30
0
0

Hon.Eng.10
120
120
30
10
30
45
60
45
60
30
25
60
30
60
30
30
30
15
60
20
30
20
60
30
30
120
40
45
45
60
60
30
30
120
0
45
15
60
45
30

Reg. Eng.11
0
20
5
15
15
60
0
0
30
30
20
0
0
0
0
0
2
10
60
0
30
0
60
25
15
45
15
60
30
30
0
45
10
0
60
40
60
20
60
25
15
30
60
30

Hon.Eng.11
90
150
60
120
120
60
60
60
60
30
45
30
120
60
15
30
60
45
60
180
60
60
30
120
60
60
60
60
60

General Eng.12
20
60
0
60
30
0
0
0
5
0
20
15
6
60
0
20
15
30
60
15
24
45
60
0
20
0
30

Honors Eng.12
30
23
30
30
30
60
15
30
60
30
80
15
60
45
23
30

AP Eng.12
60
60
60
30
30
60
80

Descriptive Statistics & Significance Tests:

Some of the original data analyzed (such as grades) were recorded for a possible other use in making correlations. The means for grades were not used, however, in this study.

Sampling & Conclusions:

After analyzing the rough data from our surveys, Nate and I have found that our original thoughts were proven true by rejecting the null. We wanted to see if the student handbook was correct in its statement that honors and AP classes would require more studies outside of school. Nate and I also thought this to be true. To test this, we recorded the minutes spent on homework in English classes each night for students within their respective grades at different levels. From this data we found the column means to obtain an average amount of time for each class level within each grade. The means of the honors and AP classes were compared to the mean of the general class to test our hypothesis. Although our hypothesis was that the time would significantly increase, we designated our null as no change in time spent and our alternative as a change or greater than. Through all the tests we obtained a p-value that was below a .01 level of significance therefor rejecting the null and accepting the alternative proving Nate and I true, so far.

Weaknesses:

There are many obstructions that occurred during this experiment. Many of which could have been controlled, had we been aware of them beforehand. A few of these weaknesses were the questions on the survey. When asking students for amount of time they spend on homework they should have had options consisting of ranges of time per night. Instead they were allowed to make up any amount of time which may not have been as accurate and obscured our graphs. The open questions at the end of the survey were not concise enough. The entire survey should have been more concise and shortened as well. The sample that was used may have been larger, however, the results that were obtained proved our hypothesis true.

Extrapolation:

The p-value that resulted from our tests was so incredibly low that I would easily extrapolate these results to the entire population of North Olmsted High School. Any further extrapolation would be risky simply because we do not know how other schools rank their classes and students.

Suggestions for Further Study:

If there were any further studies to follow I would suggest that the students that are used should be individually questioned for more honest responses simply because on our surveys many questions were answered with jokes and not taken seriously. Even though that gave us an idea of those kids who did not care about their grades that was not the information that we were after. Other than better surveys we cannot tell right now what would be better because everything worked out okay.