Study: Roommates with Consoles May Cause Lower GPAs

One of those lovable academic rapscallions at The Irascible Professor, namely Dr. Sanford Pinsker, recently discussed a paper by Ralph Stinebrickner, over at Berea College, and Todd Stinebrickner, over at Western Ontario.

The Stinebrickners published their paper in the Berkeley Electronic Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy. At first glance, the study would not attract the attention of researchers interested in videogames. The title and abstract do not hint at videogames, but rather the mundane effect studying has on college student grades.

Subjects were recruited from Berea, where roommates are randomly assigned. Students assigned to roommates who brought a videogame console system to college with them spent less time studying than those whose roommates did not bring a videogame system. To wit: if you go to college without a gaming system, and your roommate brings one (Playstation, Xbox, or Wii), your grades will suffer. Dr. Pinsker summarizes:

At Berea, those students whose (randomly selected) roommates had video games earned significantly lower first-semester GPAs: for males, 2.74 vs. 2.98; for females, 3.03 vs. 3.16. Students with a roommate who brought a video game to college report playing video games 4.06 hours per week; students with roommates who did not bring a video game report spending 0.79 hours per week. The first group spent 2.9 hours a day studying; the second group reports spending 3.6 hours a day studying.

I’ve discussed this paper before, back when it was a work in progress. As I pointed out then, the effects gaming consoles have on GPAs as shown in the paper, while statistically significant, remain negligible in practical terms.