Does Working While Attending School Affect Your Performance in the Classroom?

Group D4: Jay Terrazas and Giovana Donati

EDT 180 D

Mr. Lewallen

21 April 2019
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Does Working While Attending School Affect Your Performance in the Classroom?

Our research question was “Does working while attending school affect your performance in the

classroom?” We wanted to research this question because we know a lot of college students who in fact

work while attending school. We asked a total of 8 questions: 1. What year are you in school?, 2. How

many credit hours are you taking?, 3. Do you work?, 4. If you work, where do you work?, 5. On average

how many hours a week do you work?, 6. What shifts do you usually work?, 7. On average, how many

hours do you have available in a day to work on assignments?, and 8. On a scale from 1-10, how do you

feel you work schedule affects your school performance? To collect our data, we used a Google Form in

which students could respond to our questions via different modes of surveying like multiple choice, short

answer, linear scale, etc. In total, we received ninety responses to our survey.

The first chart we created displays the percentage of students who are either working or not

working. Fifty-six students responded that they are working while attending school, and 34 students were

not working. To find the percentage of students working, we took the number of students working and

divided it by the total number of students in the survey, ninety. Then to find the percentage of students not

working, we took the number of students not working, thirty-four, and divided it by the total number of

students in the survey. We found that sixty-two percent of respondents in our survey are working, and

thirty-eight percent of respondents are not working.

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Does Working While Attending School Affect Your Performance in the Classroom?

The second chart we created shows where the students in our survey work. We gave our

respondents the options of on-campus, off-campus, both, or not working. Our column graph expresses

where the students were working. Nine students reported that they work on-campus, forty-six students

reported they work off-campus, one student reported they work both on and off-campus, and thirty-four

students reported they are not working. The most common workplace for students in our survey is off

campus.

Our third chart represents the number of hours students responded they have to work on

assignments per day. For this chart, we wanted to show the hours available to work on assignments

whether or not they work. The average assignment time students reported was between five and six hours

per day. It was interesting to note that regardless of work schedule, a student still only has between five

and six hours a day to work on assignments. Sixteen students reported five hours to work on assignments

and sixteen students reported six hours to work on assignments. The second most common time chosen

was three hours and twelve students reported that. Only one student reported they have twenty-four hours

in a day to work on assignments.

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Does Working While Attending School Affect Your Performance in the Classroom?

Our fourth chart shows a correlation between students who are working and how they ranked

their work schedule interfering with school. Twelve students out of the fifty-six working, responded with

a “1,” meaning their work schedule has no interference with the school. The next most common number

chosen was “7,” meaning a significant interference, and ten students who reported they were working

chose “7.” The difference in the two answers was vastly different, even for just a broad question, not

getting into specifics.

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Does Working While Attending School Affect Your Performance in the Classroom?

The fifth and final chart just shows how the largest group of working students in our survey,

freshman, feel their work schedules affect their school performance. The total number of freshmen in our

survey totaled to be fifty-one, and out of those freshmen, twenty-seven reported they are working. This

chart displays that most common answer for working freshman is that there is no interference between

work and school. It is interesting to note that there was no response for a “10” which means severe

interference.

In conclusion, when reviewing our data, we found out that working, whether it be on-

campus or off-campus, does not affect the students’ performance in the classroom. Although it

was a bit odd because you would actually think that working while being a student would have

some type of effect on the students work performance, the majority of students surveyed chose

number 1 which means there is no relationship with the amount of work and the students

personal in-class performance. Now that we have completed our research there are other

questions that seem relevant to our research like, does the amount of credits you take affect your

work schedule or does the number of hours you work affect how much time you have on

assignments? It would also be interesting to research if students place more emphasis on

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Does Working While Attending School Affect Your Performance in the Classroom?

designing a work schedule around school, or a school schedule designed around one’s work

schedules. If we were to do this project differently, we would definitely try to incorporate

assignment time into our data—see how their assignment time is linked to their ranking.