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Does participation in extracurricular activities appear to have an affect on children's academic abilities?

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Does participation in extracurricular activities appear to have an affect on children's academic abilities?

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I've always taken a special interest in social and emotional development in children. My sister and I have different fathers and our fathers had different parenting styles. I grew up in a household of 7 children and missed out on a lot of opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities due to financial hardship and an authoritative parent. My sister grew up with just our brother and they were both enrolled in multiple sports and music classes. My sister was so involved with extracurricular activity that she was home-schooled for a few years to be able to train 5 days a week. I think that being a participant is beneficial to children because it helps develop leadership and priorities, which I believe are important to excelling in school. My sister disagrees and thinks being a participant creates pressure and hinders children from meeting academic potential. I thought this project was an opportunity to put our hypothesis to the test.

Before I began my data collection, I initially decided to compare adolescents to younger children. To do so, I found the mean of all the grades and split the age group: one group would be children in K-6; the other 7-12. I didn't expect to find a significant difference between the groups, but because adolescents and children go through different physical and social developments at their ages, I expected the adolescents would not have as high of grades. I ran into a few problems after I began to receive the survey results, which caused me to change the demographic of my study. Instead of comparing children in K-6 and 7-12, I concentrated my study on children in grades K-8.

I elected to collect data through a survey. I asked parents what grade their child/ren were in, if they were a participant, children's overall grades in math and language arts. I used social media platforms, parent forums, and asked classmates, friends, and family to get to my goal of 25 parents who had children that did not participate in extracurricular activities and 25 parents who had children that did participate. I was able to collect 57 surveys altogether. After I began receiving the results from my data collection survey, a few parents reached out to me and let me know that the grading system that was used for high school was different than the grading system used for elementary and middle school. After realizing this, I ended up scrapping the age group comparison and directed my study on K-8. I also had a few other parents who had children in the age  concentrated age group, but attended private or charter schools. Once again, I had to centralize my demographic to children in grades K-8 attending public school and in the end, I was only able to utilize 52 of the 57 responses.

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Does your child participate in extracurricular activity?

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Does your child participate in extracurricular activity?

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Below shows the breakdown of participants versus non-participants according to my survey responses. I had a total of 52 surgery responses. There was a 3.8% increase of non-participants than participants in my study:

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Below is a graph and table demonstrating the amount of students per grade that participated in my study:

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Below shows the breakdown of the student's genders. I let female equal 1 and male equal 2. The mean of female students is 1 with a standard deviation of 0. The mean of male students is 2 with a standard deviation of 0.

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Below shows a graph representing the amount of male students who participated in extracurricular versus those who did not. I let male equal 2. The mean of male participants is 2 with a standard deviation of 0. The mean of male non-participants is 2 with a standard deviation of 0.

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Below shows a graph representing the amount of female students who participated in extracurricular versus those who did not. Again, letting female equal 1, the mean of female participants is 1 with a standard deviation of 0. The mean of female non-participants is 1 with a standard deviation of 0.

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Below shows a graph representing the grades students who participated in extracurricular received in the school year 2019-2020 for language arts. Let ME=3, MP=2, and DP=1: The mean of participants with a grade of ME is 3 with a standard deviation of 0. The mean of participants with a grade of MP is 2 with a standard deviation of 0. The mean of participants with a grade of DP is 1 with a standard deviation of 0.

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Below shows a graph representing the grades students who did not participate in extracurricular received in the school year 2019-2020 for language arts. Let ME=3, MP=2, and DP=1: The mean of non-participants with a grade of ME is 3 with a standard deviation of 0. The mean of non-participants with a grade of MP is 2 with a standard deviation of 0. The mean of non-participants with a grade of DP is 1 with a standard deviation of 0.

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Below shows a graph representing the grades students who participated in extracurricular received in the school year 2019-2020 for language arts. I decided to let ME=3, MP=2, and DP=1. The mean of participants with a grade of ME is 3 with a standard deviation of 0. The mean of participants with a grade of MP is 2 with a standard deviation of 0. The mean of participants with a grade of DP is 1 with a standard deviation of 0.

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Below shows a graph representing the grades students who did not participate in extracurricular received in the school year 2019-2020 for language arts. Let ME=3, MP=2, and DP=1: The mean of non-participants with a grade of ME is 3 with a standard deviation of 0. The mean of non-participants with a grade of MP is 2 with a standard deviation of 0. The mean of non-participants with a grade of DP is 1 with a standard deviation of 0.

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Male Participants vs Non-Participants - Language Arts

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Female Participants vs Non-Participants - Language Arts-2

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Unfortunately, for my hypothesis, the data collection shows very little comparison of difference in overall school year grades for participants and non-participants in either subject. Majority of the children, whether a participant or non-participant, received grades of MP or ME, leaving only 5.8% of children receiving a grade of DP.

Comparing the histograms of the subgroup of male students, the students that participated in extracurricular activities had no DP grades in math, whereas the subgroup that did not had a total of 3 students with DP in math. You can see the same pattern for males in the language arts subject also. Among male participants, there were no DP grades, whereas there were 2 male students that were non-participants with DP grades. The female students, participant or non-participant, all received grades higher than MP.

I do feel like there were several limitations in my study. For example, I wanted to survey grades K-8 and most of my responses were from parents with children grades 3-5, making up for 71.2% of my responses. Another limitation I had was having to recode grades and genders. I definitely feel like I could have incorporated more into my study such as amount of times the participants went to practice. Another limitation I had was gender dominance. There was a 34.6% difference of male students to female students. My study was made up of 67.3% males and 32.7% females.

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Unfortunately, for my hypothesis, the data collection shows very little comparison of difference in overall school year grades for participants and non-participants in either subject. Majority of the children, whether a participant or non-participant, received grades of MP or ME, leaving only 5.8% of children receiving a grade of DP.

Comparing the histograms of the subgroup of male students, the students that participated in extracurricular activities had no DP grades in math, whereas the subgroup that did not had a total of 3 students with DP in math. You can see the same pattern for males in the language arts subject also. Among male participants, there were no DP grades, whereas there were 2 male students that were non-participants with DP grades. The female students, participant or non-participant, all received grades higher than MP.

I do feel like there were several limitations in my study. For example, I wanted to survey grades K-8 and most of my responses were from parents with children grades 3-5, making up for 71.2% of my responses. Another limitation I had was having to recode grades and genders. I definitely feel like I could have incorporated more into my study such as amount of times the participants went to practice. Another limitation I had was gender dominance. There was a 34.6% difference of male students to female students. My study was made up of 67.3% males and 32.7% females.