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Coffee Consumption and GPA
Research Question
The research question chosen for our project was whether or not the consumption of
coffee has any effect or correlation with an individual’s overall Grade Point Average (GPA).
With respect to the correlation, the idea is not to find a specific cause-effect relationship, but
rather to see if there is any simple correlation between the two factors. In conducting this, there
are several subcategories or specific factors that we focused on; such as the individual’s year in
school, their average amount of coffee consumed, and their gender.
Hypothesis
Our hypothesis regarding this research question is that individuals who consume coffee
will have a higher overall GPA than those who do not. With regards to our three subcategories,
we believe that the higher year in school will consume more coffee and maintain the same GPA
as other students. Also, we believe that the amount of coffee consumption will relate to GPA
positively at first, then as the amount increases to higher levels, a negative impact (an inverse Ushape curve relationship). With respect to gender, we believe that males will have a higher
amount of coffee consumption along with a higher overall GPA.
Significant Findings
Through our research, we were able to find many significant ideas that both support and
go against our original hypothesis. Overall, our hypothesis that coffee consumers will have a
higher GPA than non-consumers wasn’t wrong necessarily, but was not conclusive either.
Through our interviews, we found that all four individuals said that they have a higher GPA due
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to their coffee consumption, but the survey results showed only a 0.1% difference in the overall
GPA values; with consumers having a slight edge. This was not a significant enough difference
in our minds to conclusively say that coffee consumption has a positive effect on GPA. With
regards to our three subcategories, however, we were able to make conclusive statements
regarding our data. First, we found through our interviews that they drink more coffee as they
age, but our survey results showed that the highest percentage of coffee drinkers were Freshman,
with Seniors coming in last with only 40% consumption. Second, we found that coffee
consumption does have a positive effect on GPA at first, then as the level of consumption
increases, the GPA decreases. We found that those who drink ‘Less than one cup’ have the
highest GPA, followed by ‘1-2 cups’ of consumption, and then non-consumers. The lowest
overall GPA was seen by those that drink ‘Over 6’ cups. This shows the overall feeling found in
our research that coffee was used as a ‘tool’ to help with academics lending to the idea that
coffee has an indirect relation with GPA. Third, we found that females have a higher level of
coffee consumption along with a higher percentage of consumers; both of which went against
our hypothesis. We previously believed that males would have a higher consumption of coffee
and thus, due to our first hypothesis, would have a higher GPA when, in fact, the opposite was
true. This does, however, support our initial hypothesis of higher overall GPA due to higher
coffee consumption shown by females in our study.
Discussion
We chose coffee consumption as our topic because it is so prevalent on college campuses
and around the world. Today, the coffee industry is second to only petroleum in terms of number
of dollars traded worldwide. We wanted to see if there was a correlation between coffee
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consumption and academic performance. We also wondered what people’s reasoning was for
drinking coffee. Coffee consumption is an important topic because we are surrounded by it every
day. If we were to find a positive correlation between coffee consumption and academic
performance, that may encourage more college students to drink coffee. If we were to find that
coffee was an academic performance enhancer without the negative side effects, it could help
improve students’ grades.
Coffee was first found in the Arabian Peninsula when a shepherd noticed that his goats
were full of life, dancing around a cherry bush. The shepherd then tried a cherry and felt a
stimulating effect that allowed him and the locals to stay up later in the night praying. Although
this is an interesting story, it does not have an estimated time period and is only a myth. The first
evidence of a coffee bean tree was during the mid 1500’s and was found in Yemen. Coffee was
first seen as a miracle drug because of its energizing effect. Coffee quickly spread from the
middle-east to Europe. Coffee made its way to the Americas in the 1700’s. African slaves were
used to cultivate coffee beans in Cuba and became Cuba’s largest economic industry. Italians
were the first to invent a coffee-making espresso machine in 1822. Today, there are now over
30,000 coffee shops in the United States and the industry continues to grow.
Our research demographic included both male and female students at the University of
Illinois and ranged in school year from freshman to seniors. We chose this demographic because
we noticed a trend of college students drinking coffee for studying purposes. We also chose this
sample set because of convenience. It was the easiest demographic for us to connect with.
Although our sample set was chosen out of convenience, we still got a wide variety of different
majors, ages, and levels of coffee consumption. Also gender was split 54 to 31 in favor of the
males.
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We first hypothesized that people that consume coffee will have a higher overall GPA
than non-coffee consumers. Erving Goffman talks about a social identify as the normative
explanation of what a person should be like or how he/she should act in a given setting (Howson,
2004). In college, then, the social identity is of a student who consumes coffee due to the
constant pressure on them to study longer in order to receive better grades. Thus, the
consumption of coffee would allow for this by providing extra energy for students to aid in
studying. We found that coffee drinkers did have a higher overall GPA, but not by a significant
margin. Coffee drinkers GPA was an average of a 3.236 and non consumers had an average GPA
of 3.231 out of 4. From this, we can conclude that the consumption of coffee does not have a
significant impact upon an individual’s GPA. Looking further into this conclusion, there are
several areas of concern that may have impacted our results. For one, our GPA average data pool
yielded a very high GPA leading to the idea that this was a miss-representation of the overall
student body of consumers and non-consumers. Also, there was a very broad range of GPA
values as the different levels of coffee consumption were analyzed.
Concerning this aspect, we had an additional hypothesis stating that as the average GPA
would have an inverse bell curve type relationship with coffee consumption levels. This
relationship would mean that lower levels of coffee consumption would have higher GPA values
and then the higher levels of consumption would yield lower average GPAs. Our data supports
this hypothesis as shown in the graph above. The only problem with this conclusion would be the
‘4-6 cups’ level of consumption having a very high GPA. We considered this group an outlier
group due to the fact it did not follow the general curve of data and only two responses were
collected in this group.
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Our next hypothesis was that coffee consumption would increase as the student
progressed through school. We found that consumption increased from freshman to junior year
and then had a slight dip going into senior year. We also found that the number of nonconsumers decreased until senior year where there was a significant increase. The phenomena of
less seniors drinking than in their previous years could be an example of individualization.
Individualization is the change in consciousness where people become more aware of their own
actions over time (Howson, 2004). People begin to increasingly express themselves as
individuals and ignore social norms as time goes on. The more mature students will drink coffee
for more important purposes than the younger students that may begin drinking coffee for more
shallow reasons. By the time students are seniors, they have concluded whether or not coffee is
right for them. The maturation process turns students into a more civilized body that shows selfdiscipline and restraint.
Looking at the subcategory of gender, females had a higher consumption rate and higher
GPA’s overall than males. According to our hypotheses we had stated that we thought males
would have higher overall GPA while females would have a lower. Also, we thought that males
would have higher consumption rates than females. Our findings rejected this hypothesis and we
found that males did not drink more coffee and that females had the overall better GPA.
Although we were incorrect on our assumptions about gender differences specifically, these
findings still support our initial hypothesis that increased consumption would lead to increased
GPA scores.
Additionally, we found that the majority of coffee drinkers bought their coffee at coffee
shops. Of the total coffee consumers, we found that 20 brew at home and 23 buy their coffee
from coffee shops proving that expensive coffee shops prices do not deter students from buying
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their coffee. The people that buy their coffee at expensive coffee shops have bought into the
consumer culture. The consumer culture persuades people to self-indulge instead of showing
restraint. Consumer Culture does a good job of eliminating the guilt of overspending.
Advertising, in consumer culture, is used as a tool to promote demand by telling them what kinds
of products they should want. Consumer culture leads to people seeking certain lifestyles and
symbolic meanings in the products they buy. People buy certain products in order to say
something about who they are and who they aspire to be. Coffee drinkers could be drinking
coffee in search for social status by drinking and being seen in different social scenes.
Future Plans
In regards to our findings we ran into some minor problems that somewhat skewed our
results or didn’t give us the exact information we were looking for. One major setback we
experienced was that the majority of our participants had above average Grade Point Averages.
Overall they were very high which made it difficult to compare the effect coffee consumption
might have had since we didn’t have the full spectrum of GPAs to compare with. It would have
also been helpful to have a wider range of participants with more data in order to better sum up
all the information and make more accurate inferences and comparisons. The relationships could
have been clearer and more evident with a wider range of participants. So in terms of future
research we believe it would be helpful to look at one piece of the puzzle in particular, such as
gender and consumption or just age and its effect, and then do a more detailed outline. This
would allow us to obtain more accurate and precise findings instead of such a broad
collaboration of data. It would also be important to narrow down our research question, allowing
a more detailed study to get a more direct and definitive relationship if there is one. It could be
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useful to use more forms of data collection as well. For example, doing observations and more
interviews could be useful and also specifying our interview questions could help to sync up all
our information to lessen the sometimes scattered and unrelated data. To get to an exact
relationship of whether or not coffee actually affects GPA, I think it would be most reasonable to
look at it from a physical perspective. It would be the easiest to measure along with the most
accurate and very little subjective bias. You would take the data from the biological effect that
coffee has on the body specifically in regards to caffeine effects. This way you can draw
deliberate conclusions and comparisons to coffee consumption and GPA. Another study that we
suggest would be to take a non-consumer and a consumer and have them switch roles for a
month or two, and then compare the grades they received prior to switching and see the results.
This would allow for a cause-effect relationship as well as decrease the outside factors due both
subjects experiencing both sides of the study.
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Bibliography
Howson, A. (2004). The body in society. (p. 20). Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Howson, A. (2004). The body in society. (p. 73). Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Howson, A. (2004). The body in society. (p. 93). Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Coffee’s journey around the world. (2011, November 27) Retrieved from
http://coffeeuniverse.com/world_coffee.html
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