Weakness

One of the most obvious weaknesses of the study came in the form of nonresponse bias. We sampled 50 students of each gender, but only received 26 male surveys and 27 female surveys. Additionally, there may be weakness in the form of response bias. Because of the wording of the question “How many extracurriculars are you in this year?” some students may have only included the extracurriculars that they are currently in, rather than a total for the entire 2015-2016 school year. Selection bias affected the study since we excluded students whose schedules didn’t allow for a survey to be sent out. Confounding variables that could have impacted the weakness of the study include course load and whether or not a student has a job or other responsibility that prevents them from participating in a school related activity.

Extrapolation

This data could be extrapolated to the entire North Olmsted High School population. This data could also be extrapolated to the populations of other high schools that offer similar courses and extracurriculars and have similar start and end times.

 

Suggestions for Future Studies

Since our study focused only on the population of North Olmsted High School, further work in the area could be done by taking larger samples that include high school students from across the country so that the information could possibly be seen as representative of the population of all high school students in the United States. Conducting a similar experiment with a larger sample size would increase the statistical strength of the study.