THE DISCUSSION - Weakness
Some weaknesses presented in our study were response-error related to our survey. For example, people would select two or more parents and only select one as either working full time, part time, or unemployed. Some students also responded without knowing their cumulative grade point average. We also had some non-response bias, where we did not receive all the surveys we had originally sent out. Of all the surveys sent out, we had 80.00% returned to us. Out of all of the surveys, we could use 70.66% of the surveys. Also, we had 9.33% of our surveys that had some sort of response bias on them, and 20.00% of the surveys were not returned to us.
There could have been many other questions on our surveys as well, because we don’t know every individuals exact situation. A confounding variable for this study might be that we took students cumulative grade point average and not their recent grade point average. If we would have taken students current grade point average we might see more of the effects of the economy. For instance, we might see the upper classmen’s grade point average change because their grades might be affected from a part time job they might have to hold because of our recent economy crisis. We also believe that this study might have been more effective with younger students. With the economy the way it is, we believe we will start to see the true impact in years to come. One extraneous factor of this is that more parents will have to hold a job leaving less time to help their children with school work.
THE DISCUSSION - Extrapolation
Our study could be extrapolated to many different high schools across the nation. This study is most relevant in suburbs similar to North Olmsted, Ohio or maybe somewhat smaller than North Olmsted. Some areas that it might not be extrapolated to are the inner city of large cities such as Cleveland, Ohio, or Chicago, Illinois. These cities have many struggling families and violence where the dropout rate is very low, and students do not learn as much due to these factors.
THE DISCUSSION - Suggestions for Further Work
Further work in our area of study can include having a more in depth survey. We would want to increase our population in order to make sure our sample size is always over 30 for both single and paired parents. The study could also be extended to determine if children from parents who work full time have a lower Grade Point Average than those parents who work part time. We could also compare the younger generations of students to older ones to see if there is any differences. One final question that could be asked is: Is the economy taking an affect on students grade point averages?