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Results

regress GPA age gender cost per drink number

Source | SS df MS Number of obs = 4514

————-+—————————— F( 4, 4509) = 3.90

Model | 269.265992 4 67.3164979 Prob > F = 0.0036

Residual | 77744.5357 4509 17.2420793 R-squared = 0.0035

————-+—————————— Adj R-squared = 0.0026

Total | 78013.8017 4513 17.2864617 Root MSE = 4.1524

——————————————————————————

GPA | Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]

————-+—————————————————————-

age | -.1255198 .0346157 -3.63 0.000 -.1933836 -.0576559

gender | .169121 .1289521 1.31 0.190 -.0836883 .4219303

costperdrink | .0678351 .032432 2.09 0.037 .0042525 .1314177

drinknumber | .0107106 .0310403 0.35 0.730 -.0501437 .0715649

_cons | 5.891361 .7070251 8.33 0.000 4.505245 7.277477

Discussion

The results indicate that in a nutshell that alcohol does indeed significantly affect the GPA of college students. Also evident to an extent from the results, is the implication that the relationship between alcohol, the student’s GPA and their general wellbeing is of a cyclical nature. Whereas Alcohol consumption significantly affects a student’s GPA, low academic scores (lower GPA scores) also seem to have an effect on the levels of alcohol consumption exhibited by the student. Seemingly, students with lower GPA scores exhibited higher levels of alcohol consumption, although the results and findings were in a way complicated by the cost of drinks. This increased consumption of alcohol also had small but statistically significant effects on the student’s GPA and performance, essentially worsening the situation most of the students would find themselves in. These findings were more pronounced within the male gender, with the consumption of alcohol also being significantly lower amongst the female participants compared to their male counterparts.

In fact, the findings were statistically insignificant amongst the females, implying that cases where alcohol consumption significantly affected the students’ levels of academic performance were not enough in number to elicit statistically significant findings. The findings were statistically significant indicating the existence of a relationship between age, alcohol consumption and academic performance, the findings do seem to indicate slightly lower performance levels for the younger participants, with the younger participants also showing a higher likelihood of consuming more drinks than their older counterparts.

The findings do serve to confirm the hypotheses formed at the beginning of the research, as they confirm that alcohol does indeed have a negative effect on academic performance. Although the findings are quantitatively smaller than expected, the findings are statistically significant.

The effect that alcohol consumption has on students’ GPA is to a large extent linked to the fact that increased alcohol consumption results in higher rates of school absenteeism, as well as an inability to fully participate in class-work or submit quality assignments, and difficulties when it comes to tackling school related tasks. The problem normally worsens with higher levels of alcohol consumption. The relationship between gender and academic performance is definitely one that warrants further exploration, as it falls in line with existing literature on gender differences in terms of the effects of alcohol consumption on academic performance. Perhaps one of the plausible explanations, could be that females are unlikely to consume alcohol at the same rate as their male counterparts, while the levels of tolerance amongst the females is definitely lower, resulting in lower levels of alcohol consumption amongst the women. In a way, the degree of elasticity is higher when it comes to GPA scores for the gender, as there are more factors that are likely to affect male GPA scores more.

Although the findings do indicate that the consumption of alcohol affects performance amongst the younger college students significantly, the relationship between the higher consumption of alcohol within this younger age group as the main cause of the greater degree of elasticity is inferred, as the findings were that younger college students showed a greater tendency to consume more alcohol. The findings for the relationship between the cost per drink and the number of drinks consumed, was not statistically significant amongst participants of ages above 22, although it seemed to be a determining factor for the younger participants, with higher costs per drink discouraging alcohol consumption.

Functional forms other than linear forms were not considered during analysis of the results, though further complicated relationships mentioned above would probably have been elicited by considerations of other functional forms.