Table of Contents
Abstract
There are many studies that look at what goes into a student’s success, whether that be factors such; as home life, their education environment and their overall wellbeing. The point of this study is to look at the relationships students have with family members and how that correlates to student’s in college success rate. This study was conducted on 54 college students to address whether or not family relationships affect GPA. It was hypothesized that the students that have positive relationships with family members will tend to have a larger GPA than those who have negative relationships with family members. To analyze the data a chi-square test was performed and indicated that there is significance between positive family relationships and GPA.
Over the last few years there has been a lot of research into students and what factors in their life help them succeed the most in school. One research article looked at how home-life and peers affects students and their education (Rambaran et. al., 2016). They found that what happens in school is a larger factor when students are in grade school. Another similar study found that students’ academic success again, revolves more so in the school environment rather than home environment (O’Malley et. al., 2015). This study found that students who were homeless and living in a one-parent household were performing better in school. These findings are looking more at the relationships of high school students, as a college student after reading these studies I become more interested in finding if home life affects students as they progress in their academics. The goal of this study is to enhance the viewpoint of the importance of family relationships with college students and how it relates to their GPA.
This study is congruent to a study done by Jane Hunt and colleagues (2017) where they had 143 college participants take a survey in which they found that participants who experienced more inter-parental conflict had lower self-reported grade point average. This current study is parallel to Hunt’s study in that it will be testing interpersonal relationships with family members and looking at the support they give and receive from family.
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Another study was conducted in 2018 on the difference of financial or emotional support for low-income students and found that family emotional support is a large predictor of student’s success in terms of grades earned and continuation in school (Roska & Kinsley). This makes sense because connections and communication with loved ones results in a higher level of well-being which results in higher success rates (Robertson, Smart & Bromfield, 2010) and therefore supports this study’s hypothesis. My prediction is those students who have a positive relationship; meaning they speak to their family members often, and feel like there is equal support being offered will therefore report in higher reported GPA’s.
Method
Sample
This survey was comprised of 54 total responses from college students. The participants were volunteers from online social media outlets such as; Facebook, an app called GroupMe, and an email list of students in Colorado State’s Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) 350 class.
Research Design
The research conducted studied the relationship college students have with families and their GPA, a between-group difference. The dependent variable was the student’s grade point average and the independent variable was the student’s perceived relationship with family members. For this study a good relationship with family members is a scenario whether they speak to their family members often and they offer support for one another.
The survey was conducted through Survey Monkey in which students had one week to complete and they could easily click on a link which directed them to five questions, 2 of which were used for the purposes of this study. Participants were given a scenario, “I have a positive relationship with my family. We talk often and offer support to each other.” The participants were asked on a Likert 5 point ordinal scale on which they most related to (1-strongly agree,2- agree, 3-neither, 4-disagree or 5- strongly disagree). This scenario was given to get a view on how the students see themselves and their families. The second question was grade point average from 0.0 to 4.0. Once the participants finished the questionnaire the responses were then transferred to a Statistics Software (SPSS) and analyzed.
Results
A chi-square test was performed to determine whether those who have a positive relationship with their family members affect their GPA. Three cells (50.0%) had expected counts less than 5; thus, the Likelihood ratio of the chi-square statistic was appropriate. The Likelihood ratio statistic indicates that the association between these two variables is significant. Those who reported more positive relationships had higher GPA’s. The strength of the association, as indicated by Cramer V, the value is .807, which suggests a stronger than typical effect size according to Cohen’s guidelines (1992).
Discussion
The hypothesis that students with positive reports of family relationships have a higher GPA is supported. However, due to limitations of the study there would be reason to conduct another study to obtain reliable results. This study could be improved in a few areas such as; survey questions and data collection.
The results may have been limited due to the fact that the scenario provided in the first question could have been seen as a double-barreled question rather than a scenario and caused confusion for participants. There should have also been less response answers for this questions because the “neither agree or disagree” provided responses that had to be removed in data analysis because they did not provide information that was needed or necessary for the purposes of this study. The strongly agree and agree, strongly disagree and disagree responses had to be combined to run a Chi-Square test resulting in a smaller variance of responses. There are also many variables to establish if someone has a positive relationship with family members so finding one variable within family relationships that affects GPA is difficult to obtain.
The second concern with the study is the way the survey was sent out. Although the responses were random the participants still included those who are connected to me on social media and those that were in the same HDFS 350 class. However, many of the participants were a broad range of students ranging from those in Colorado Springs, Fort Collins and Denver/Golden area. Fifty-four participants participated in the study and four of the responses had to be removed. So if there is a way to provide a more randomized study with a larger sample size that is recommended.
This study offers support to families providing support to help their students succeed and can maybe influence the importance of being connected with family. This study could go further into depth when asking students about their relationships with families, the consistency of their relationships, the educational help they received from family in younger years, if divorced parents affect students in college and if students at different colleges might have different responses. There could also be studies on if students relationships with families might have an effect on their mental health which could have consequences in academics (Robertson, Smart & Bromfield, 2010).
References
- Cohen, J. (1992). A power primer. Psychological bulletin, 112(1), 155.
- Hunt, S. J., Krueger, L. E., & Limberg, D. (2017). The Relationship Between Interparental Conflict and Self‐Reported Grade Point Average Among College Students. Journal of College Counseling, 20(3), 237-249.
- O’malley, M., Voight, A., Renshaw, T. L., & Eklund, K. (2015). School climate, family structure, and academic achievement: A study of moderation effects. School Psychology Quarterly, 30(1), 142.
- Price-Robertson, R., Smart, D., & Bromfield, L. (2010). Family is for life connections between childhood family experiences and wellbeing in early adulthood. Family Matters, (85), 7.
- Rambaran, J. A., Hopmeyer, A., Schwartz, D., Steglich, C., Badaly, D., & Veenstra, R. (2017). Academic functioning and peer influences: A short‐term longitudinal study of network–behavior dynamics in middle adolescence. Child development, 88(2), 523-543.
- Roksa, J. & Kinsley, P. Res High Educ (2018). The Role of Family Support in Facilitating Academic Success of Low-Income Students. Research in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-018-9517-z
