Research on the negative impacts of alcohol is endless, yet college students continue to exhibit risky alcohol related behaviors (Mcmurtrie, 2014). Binge drinking is a common practice for college aged people. Binge drinking is having multiple drinks in a short period of time (Smolen, 2018).Social, cultural, emotional, coping with stress are all motivators for why college students drink (Smolen, 2018). It is well known that there are many negative impacts and consequences when it comes to alcohol, but often students forget that it affects their learning and academic success (Smolen, 2018).
Links between binge drinking in college and impairment on memorizing have been made, which could hinder one’s academic success (Smolen, 2018). Alcohol consumption on college campuses are very prominent, yet there is limited research into how, or if, it impacts college students’ academic performance (An, Loes, & Trolian, 2017) . It is important to identify the relationship between alcohol consumption and academic success known to college students.
Sleep deprivation is another noticeable problem among college students that impacts their academics. A study by Gilbert and Weaver (2010) found that students that had poor sleep quality also had lower GPAs than students with good sleep patterns and quality. This study was made up of 468 college students and looked at their demographics and their score on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, along with their academic performance and GPA (Gilbert & Weaver, 2010).
They measured for depression in order to exclude depressed students from the study, which showed that there was still a negative impact on sleep and academic success when students were not depressed (Gilbert & Weaver, 2010). This evidence suggests that poor sleep quality has a negative impact on academic success, forcing them to find coping mechanisms.
Alcohol misuse is linked to sleep deprivation. An experimental study by Kenny, Paves, Grimaldi, and LaBrie (2014) found that there was a relationship between poor sleep and increased alcohol consumption in order to cope with the lack of sleep. This study used 2,689 participants from a private and a public university (Kenny et al., 2014). They measured sleep quality on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, drinking motives with a 20 question survey, consequences of alcohol using the Rutgers Alcohol Problems Index, and drinks per week using a daily questions (Kenny et al.,2014).
Not only did they find that poor sleep quality was associated with increased drinking motive, but they also found that increased alcohol intake lead to poor sleep (Kenny et al., 2014). This suggests that poor sleep causes college students to drink alcohol in order to fall asleep, which is a cycle that can impede on their daily lives and learning. This can have a negative impact on their academic performance.
Both alcohol and academic success are linked to sleep consequences. It is important to look at what link is between drinking alcohol, something that students often partake in, and academic success. Alcohol and academic success also have a negative relationship. In a study by An, Loes, and Trolian (2017), studied the relationship between binge drinking and academic performance. They noted that binge drinking is linked to bad performance in class, test taking, and course work (An et al., 2017). An et al. (2017) looked at a sample of 7,774 students at 39 different institutions.
They analyzed academic performance by using 4-point GPA scale (An et al., 2017). They looked at academic involvement (i.e. going to class, participating, motivation to work hard) and the number of times a student drinks in a week through self assessment, while accounting for confounding variables, such as drinking before college, greek involvement, and learning disabilities (An et al., 2017). This study found that binge drinking negatively impacts academic performance (An et al., 2017).
In this study, I will be examining the relationship between drinking behaviors and academic performance of college students. In order to do this, I will be conducting a survey. I hypothesise that there will be a negative relationship between drinking and academic performance because of past research that shows increased alcohol consumption leads to lowered memory capacity, academic involvement, and overall GPA.
