Abstract
Social networking sites (SNS) have created a new social dimension where individuals can develop increased levels of their social awareness and getting information in many more aspects of everyday lives. SNS help people to enhance their knowledge, which is very beneficial especially for students. However, some argue the use of SNS also entails negative effects that overrule the gains. This may be reflected on students’ grades.
The main objective of this research is to analyse the relationship between student’s academic performance and use of SNS. The research was conducted through the use of online questionnaires. Excel and SPSS software were used to analyse the data collected. Findings from this study showed that there is a weak, negative relationship between these two variables.
Chapter 1: Introduction
There is no doubt that the global revolution of SNS has brought great changes to many aspects of everyday life. People use them to keep in touch with distant friends and relatives or to make new social and professional acquaintances.
Whatever the reason behind this increased use, SNS have for many become a way of life. Especially for young people, SNS are the most innovative tools that enable them not only to contact other individuals, but most importantly to create a positive ‘self-image’ (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).
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At the same time, however, there is an increasing concern about the threats arising from the excessive use of SNS.
Although there is prior research on how SNS affect people’s relationships, the literature on how they affect students’ academic performance is still in its infancy. The main objective of this research is to fill this gap in literature and examine how the use of SNS affects academic performance.
Paper Structure
This paper commences with a short review of prior literature on the topic where some information about the various SNS will be given. It will then continue to Chapter 3 where the methodology followed to approach the objective and gather the necessary data will be explained. Chapter 4 follows, where the collected data will be analysed using statistical analysis tests and findings will be reported. The paper will then finalise with some conclusions and recommendations given in Chapter 5.
Chapter 2: Literature Review
The section of literature review has a purpose to put this study into context with previous research on SNS providing some examples of such sites and students use of SNS. Finally, prior research on the relationship of SNS and academic performance will be examined.
Definition and Examples of SNS
Social networking sites have been defined as “an online community of Internet users who want to communicate with other users about areas of mutual interest” (William, 2009).
Globally there are many SNS, but the most popular ones are the Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.
Facebook is the most widely used SNS with currently more than 1.2 billion users. It was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, with the initial intention for students in a certain college to keep in touch with each other. According to recent statistics, the average time a user spends on Facebook per month is 15 hours and 33 minutes.
Twitter is a real-time communication platform where users are able to interact and build relationships with their network of contacts by posting and receiving messages. It started in 2006 as an experiment of short online announcements and it now has more than 555 million users.
Google+ is a social networking platform created by the search engine giant, Google, in an attempt to outperform Facebook. It was launched in 2011 and it currently has around 500 million users. Google+ enables targeted sharing of information within certain subgroups of users’ contacts and the viewing, managing and editing of multimedia.
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LinkedIn is the professional social network launched in 2003. People join this network mainly to make professional connections and use them to build a career. Companies that are in search of qualified employees and job-hunters also use LinkedIn. The profile created by users is like a resume but with the option to include extensive information in each field.
Use of SNS
Statistics reveal that 98% of people aged between 18-24 are using some form of SNS. Apart from socialising and staying in touch with friends, people in those ages use SNS for a variety of other reasons. As in the age of 18 most people are going to be in higher education, there is evidence showing that students use those sites to research colleges and assist their decision on where to enrol (Tisley, 2012).
They also use them during their university life to enable their communication with other students or even staff. According to Oradini and Saunders (2007), students can use SNS to initiate a discussion and decide what information they would like to share and with whom. Many universities have recently recognised this increased use of SNS and their ability to act as a platform of online learning and have therefore taken steps to incorporate them into their strategy.
SNS and Academic Performance
The term academic performance is used to measure the ‘success’ of a student in terms of their achievements and their ability to meet certain standards defined by the institution they are attending. Reference? It can be assumed that by having access to the latest information available, either through visiting companies’ and broadcasting profiles or through the exchange of useful information, students increase their awareness towards a better achievement of results. However, there is a contradiction of views relating to the use of SNS and their effect on students’ grades. While some studies show that there is no link between SNS and academic performance (Truong, 2010) others provide evidence that there is an adverse effect of SNS on students’ grades mainly due to the fact that too much time is spent on them, leaving limited time for studying.
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Chapter 3: Research Methodology
In this chapter, a methodology for collecting the necessary information for the research will be defined. This will include a description of the method for collecting information and an explanation of why the methods chosen were the most suitable, providing reliability to the report.
Research Approach
Selecting the right research approach is fundamental in order to answer the questions that were presented successfully. In this study, the researchers carried out scientific research and aimed to develop a hypothesis, which was then tested and examined to establish a theory. Therefore, a deductive research approach was considered to be most suitable (Hussey and Hussey, 1997).
According to Robson (2002), the researchers had to deduct hypotheses from theory and then express them in operational terms, proposing a relationship between two variables. The objectives this research had led to the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis: There is a relationship between the use of SNS and students’ academic performance.
Therefore the Null Hypothesis is: There is no relationship between the use of SNS and students’ academic performance.
This hypothesis was chosen as prior literature focused exclusively on the effect of the use of Facebook on academic performance and not the use of SNS in general.
Time horizon
This research is cross-sectional study, as the data collection methods were designed to “gather data at a particular point in time with the intention of describing the nature of existing conditions” (Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 1994).
This approach was a suitable method to use given the limited time that was available to undertake the research.
Data collection Methods
The research was conducted through the use of online questionnaires. They were distributed to students via email from December 2012 to January 2013, a research period that is “distinct and discrete phase of the investigation” (Johnson, 2004).
Respondents were informed that all material they provided would remain confidential while anonymity was promised. A briefing statement (See Appendix I) informed participants as to the purpose of the research and the extent of confidentiality. The full list of questions can be found in Appendix II.
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Data analysis methods
Quantitative data was analysed using the SPSS analysis software, where correlation was used to examine the existence of a relationship between the variables and regression analysis to assess the strength of those relationships. In order to carry out regression statistics, it was essential to distinguish the factors between the dependent variable (y) and the independent variables (x).
Since the purpose of this analysis was to discover the extent to which academic performance is dependent on changes in the variables investigated, academic performance was identified as the dependent variable while hours spent on homework, social networking sites, playing games and surfing on the internet were defined as the independent variables.
It should be noted here that academic performance is defined using the latest available grades of the participants. This led to the following model being developed: Academic Performance = b0 + b1Hours spent studying + b2Hours spent on social networks +b3Hours spent on other activities The data was analysed by bivariate correlation and linear regression. Once this technique was completed, each variable was analysed explicitly in order to assess individual relationships and test the hypothesis by stressing the most noteworthy relationship between independent and dependent variable.
Validity & Reliability
In order for the research to be useful, actions had to be taken to safeguard the validity and reliability of results. According to Joppe (2000), the extent to which results are reliable depends on how consistent they are over time and whether identical results can be acquired if the investigation is repeated. Validity is concerned with whether the findings are what they appear to be and whether a relationship between two variables is merely a coincidence.
There are many threats to reliability and validity. The subject error and participant bias are threats to reliability (Saunders et al., 2009) that can be tackled by carefully selecting the right research population. Mortality is a threat to validity, since it would result to a very small sample size that would be unable to determine whether relationships between variables were simply casual. In enhancing the validity and reliability, the research was conducted at the University of Southampton and the questionnaires were handed both to undergraduate and postgraduate students in various programs. Also, a pilot questionnaire was conducted with 10 students to complete that provided feedback.
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Chapter 4: Results & Analysis
The purpose of this section is to present the findings of this study, which will be critically evaluated to identify their reliability. Implications will be acknowledged.
Descriptive Statistics
In total 303 responses were collected by students of the University of Southampton. Out of the total number of participants, 8 abandoned the survey without saving it so only 275 responses were used. The demographics of the sample are summarized in the figures below. The sample consisted of 149 males and 126 females (See Figure 1) and most participants (n= 193) aged between 21-24 (See Figure 2).
Figure [ 1 ] – Participants’ Gender
Figure [ 2 ] – Participants Age
Out of the total sample, only 5 participants were not part of a SNS where as the rest 270 participants had a profile on either one or multiple SNS. Out of those who were part of an SNS, the majority of participants (n= 273) had a profile on Facebook (See Figure 3).
Also, most of the participants (n=234) have been using SNS for more than 3 years (See Figure 4).
Figure 3 – Number of Participants; profiles on SNS
Figure 4 – Time period participants use SNS
When asked about the reasons participants use SNS, many corresponded to keep in touch with their family and friends (n=108) whereas a significant amount of them (n=70) replied to keep updated on current affairs (See Figure 5).
Figure 5 – Reasons for using SNS
In relation to the academic performance of participants, most of them (n=76) study between 1-4 hours (See Figure 6) with 50 of them managing to get grades between 70-100 (See Figure 7).
The average grade the participants received is 68.
Figure 6 – Participants’ Time allocation on an Average Day
Figure 7 – Participants’ Grades
Data Analysis
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It is now necessary to relate these findings back to the initial hypothesis.
We use correlation analysis in order to examine the relationship between two variables. Pearson’s r statistic is the one, which will determine if there is any relationship between our variables. As it can be seen from the table above, the Pearson’s r for the correlation between the ‘Hours spent on doing homework’ and the ‘Hours spent using SNS’ is -0.117, which is relatively close to 0. This means that there is a negative relationship between those variables, indicated by the negative sign, and as the one variable increases in value, the second variable decreases in value. However, since this valued is very close to 0, this is a week relationship and it is unlikely that changes in one variable are correlated with changes in the other.
Observing the Sig. (2-tailed) value we can determine the significance of the relationship. If that value is less or equal to 0.05, we can conclude that there is statistically significant correlation between the hours spent on homework and the social network use. Here the value (0.052) is extremely close to the benchmark so the relationship is statistically significant.
