Research on Effects of Alcohol Consumption on Academic Performance

Over the last few years, there has been an increase in the number of high school students who consume alcohol. Based on a study conducted by Harvard School of Public Health (1999), 44% of the students studied consumed alcohol and 23% consumed alcohol frequently.

Alcohol consumers are likely to be involved in some alcohol-related problems such as violence, car accidents, being injured and the likelihood of losing responsibility in school performance. (Pullen, 1994). Alcohol consumption can lead to reduced class attendance, poor performance on tests and projects and inability to concentrate on the classwork. The research paper, therefore, would like to find out whether alcohol consumption among high school students has an effect on academic performance.

Abstract

This paper discusses the effects of alcohol consumption on academic performance among high school students. The paper aims at finding whether those students who consume alcohol perform better than the students who do not consume alcohol and vice versa.

Literature review

Alcohol consumption is among the unhealthy behavior among the high school students that may affect their academic performance. Alcohol consumption is associated with behavioral problems such as poor academic performance.

Many researches have been conducted to show the effects of alcohol consumption on academic performance among high school students. (Pullen, 1994).

 There are no controlled studies on the effects of alcohol on academic performance. This is because it is illegal to provide alcohol to minors. Research done on adults revealed that alcohol consumption disrupts learning on adults and their ability to remember. However, the effects may be for a short period of time and their severity depends on the frequency of the drinking and the amount of alcohol consumed. (Pullen, 1994).

In addition the few correlation studies that have been conducted to find out the relationship between alcohol consumption and academic performance among the high school students has produced results that are inconsistent. (Pullen, 1994).

On one side of a  national survey conducted, it revealed that heavy alcohol drinkers had a high likelihood of missing classes, having reduced responsibility on class work and also having poor performance on the tests done and the class projects than non heavy drinkers of alcohol. Other surveys have also revealed that alcohol consumption led to reduced grades in the class work as the students committed few hours on the class. (Pullen, 1994).

On the other hand of the survey which was conducted between 3 different learning institutions, they produced varying results. Two of these studies credited that alcohol consumption and academic performance was as a result of differences among the students.

There was a strong correlation of 0.32 of students who involved in alcohol consumption and the subsequent academic performance among the 444 in mid-western University. However, this correlation was not significant when controlling for school rank, academic aptitude and other variables. (Pullen, 1994).

In the second study, it was revealed that the students involved themselves in heavy drinking but this did not affect the school performance. Centrally, the third study found a negative association between alcohol consumption and poor academic performance among the 754 students in the North Eastern liberal college.

Theory

To show the effects of alcohol consumption on academic performance Grossman model will be employed. This model shows that those individuals who invest less in their early lives’ health will not be productive and will be less successful than those who invest more in their health lives early in their lives. (Pullen, 1994).

Basing this prediction to our study, it could therefore be assumed that those people who consume less alcohol in their early lives will be more productive academically than those people who consume a lot of alcohol in their early lives. It would be easy to assume that alcohol consumption reduces the student’s health on a long term basis.

A lot of time is lost I alcohol consumption that the students only place less time in their academic work. These short term effects of alcohol could lead to poor academic performance, poor health and disruptive social behavior. (Pullen, 1994).

It can therefore be concluded that alcohol has negative effects on academic performance. Students who consume alcohol in the evening have high chances of missing classes, spend little time studying, have poor academic grades and are most likely to experience education related stress. (Pullen, 1994).

Method

Participants

The study will consist 120 students from the high schools in New Orleans. The rank of the students varied from those in the first years to the senior students in the school. The ages of the students ranged between 14 to 20 years. Both male and female students were included in the study.
Procedure

The study is no experimental in that it uses the correlation design to study the academic performance of the students’ inn relation to alcohol consumption.

The students will sign up for the study or they will be recruited by the researcher when they attend meetings for the various students groups in the schools with the consent of their teachers. Because of issues of privacy, the students will not be required to sign the consent sheet.

The students also will place the filled questionnaires in envelopes that are unmarked and the researcher will debrief them. The questions from the questionnaires will be coded and then analyzed to find out whether there is any relationship between alcohol consumption and academic performance.