Relationship between Students Academic Performance and their Involvement in Social Media - Essay Example

The advancements in information and technology have made internet-enabled gadgets such as cell phones and tablets more accessible than ever before. More people spend a significant portion of their time gazing at the screen of their phones or tablets just to see the latest update in social media. For instance, in a school setup, it is no longer a shocking scenario to find three-quarters of students in a classroom chatting on Facebook or sending Tweets while the lectures are ongoing. One may then wonder if such students gain anything from the lectures. In view of this, this research paper asks: What is the relationship between students’ academic performance and their involvement in social media?

Hypothesis

Students who spend most of their time on social media depict a generally dismal performance in their academics.

Research Method

Experimental research methods form the basis of understanding the above research problem. The independent variable is students’ involvement in social media while the dependent variable is their academic performance. Understandably, different high schools have different policies regarding students’ usage of cell phones, tablets, or other internet-enabled gadgets within the school compound. Therefore, the research will begin by selecting at least four five different 6 different schools, three of which are those that limit students from carrying phones to class and the other three which are liberally pertaining to this matter. The second stage will be to select a random sample of 10 students from each of these schools. Then using questionnaires, each of the participants in the experiment would be required to respond to closed-ended structured questions. The basic questions, for instance, will be:

1. Do you carry any internet-enabled gadgets to class?
2. Have you signed up for any social media? If yes, is it Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace?
3. Have you ever signed in to any of the above social media during lectures?
4. What was your academic GRADE in the last two semesters?

Experimental validity

The validity of this experiment is most likely to be compromised due to the experimenters’ bias. As already stated, most experimenters get into a research study with an already formulated mindset of what the expected results could be. To address this issue, a double-blind procedure may be used. For instance, the experimenter would first get the answers for question 4 above before checking out the answers for questions 1-3.

Ethical Concerns

Before carrying out any experimental research study, it is ethical to always seek the informed consent of the participants as well as get permission from the authorities. In this case, the authorities will be the school administration. Also, it is necessary to always maintain the privacy and confidentiality of the data gathered. This is to imply that the names of the students who participated in the research should remain concealed at all costs not unless the students permit its usage.

Possible sources of errors

While experimental research may appear as simplistic as discussed above, there are other sources of errors that may interfere with the credibility of the outcome results. For instance, other variables such as the economic status of the students, social class, and cultural diversity are beyond the experimenter's control and may interfere with the results. For example, it is expected that a student from a high social class to be affected little by the usage of such gadgets as it is part of their lifestyle since childhood. This may not be the case for those from the low class. This may be resolved by considering a relatively homogenous study sample.