Coffee Consumption and GPA

Our study focused on the relationship of coffee consumption with GPA. We specifically focused on three subcategories as well, including year in school, level of consumption, and gender. We hypothesized that overall, coffee consumers would have a higher GPA than non-consumers for various reasons. Also, we believed that our research would show that coffee consumption would go up as year in school increased, that GPA would have an inverse-U relationship with level of consumption (positive at first then negative as level significantly increases), and finally that Males would have a higher level of consumption as well as higher overall GPAs. To find this out, we conducted four interviews of students on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus concerning their coffee consumption. In addition to this, we conducted an online survey of over 80 individuals gaining information about their demographics, coffee consumption, reasons why they drink, and their view of how coffee has helped or hindered their academics. Using these two sources of information, we then drew conclusions from the interviews about coffee's relationship with GPA and then went to the survey results to see if these findings were supported. After doing this, we found that coffee consumption does not have a significant impact upon an individual's GPA. The average difference of GPA for consumers vs. non-consumers was too small to draw any conclusions on even though consumers GPA was higher (by .1). Also, we found that although many people believe that coffee consumption may increase by year in school, our data showed that it actually decreased, with Seniors having the lowest level (40%). Additionally, we found that level of consumption does matter, with the smaller amounts of coffee consumption yielding higher GPA values than the larger amounts of consumption. Finally, we found that contrary to our believe, Females had a higher percentage of coffee drinkers, drank more coffee on average, and had much higher GPAs than their male counterparts.unpublishednot peer reviewe