Adolescents Happiness and Academic Success Essay

Adolescents happiness and academic success How it is affected by disjoin Abstract The challenges faced when a family is going through divorce puke ache a large impact on a teenagers boilers suit ability to succeed in every day activities much(prenominal) as school or extracurricular activities. This may be caused by feelings of overpower striving and pressure to take full responsibility of other(a) siblings or distraught p arents, therefore taking time away from school work. On page 362 in the sixth pas seul of Psychology themes and Variations, it shows the results of Holmes and Rahes theory of life-changing events and their connection with stress levels.On a scale of one to one-hundred, divorce rated a seventy-three. We decided to study how students at Mountain Crest are academically affected by split parents. We found that a or so higher chassis of students with married parents participated in healthy extracurricular activities and obtained break out grades than stude nts with divorced or stranded parents. But the results were not as forceful as we expected. Introduction Life transfigures are any noticeable alterations in ones living circumstances that require readjustment. (Pg 362, sixth edition of Psychology themes and variations).There are many different events that cause change in ones life, a common alteration be divorce. We wanted to study how the performance of high school students is affected by family situations, such as divorced or married parents. We predicted that students who come from baffled families (divorced and/or remarried parents, step-siblings, ect. ) have a swallow level of peace and a higher level of contention in their home. We hypothesized that this would affect their scholastic accomplishments and they leave behind have lower grade point mediocres and less involvement in healthy extracurricular activities such as school sports and clubs. MethodWe expressed our look back at Mountain Crest High School in Hyrum, do in April of 2008. First, we asked people if they would take a survey for us. In large groups such as full classes, we asked for the t each(prenominal)ers permission to conduct a survey in their class. We took our surveys in general/required classes such as computer technology and history creating a widespread meld of students. Before passing out the surveys we instructed the taste to involve the survey in the air when they were completed, and ensured them that no one would know what they had marked. This was to elbow grease to eliminate distortions in self-report caused by peer pressure.When the sample group concur to take our survey we passed them to the volunteers. When each person was finished with their survey we went approximately personally and collected their survey. We surveyed a total of sixty students, ranging in ages 15-18. We selected stochastic classes with a variety of students of different races and gender. After collecting the surveys, we divided them ag ree to their parents marital status. We then tallied the results of the students grades and involvement in extracurricular activities in each pile. Results ResultsExtracurricular activitiesGrade Point AverageYesNo3. 0 or higher2. 9 or lower Married 28173213 Divorced/separated7887 We found that 62. 2% of adolescents with married parents were involved in healthy extracurricular activities, while 53. 3% of students with divorced or separated parents were not. 71. 1% of students with married parents maintain a grade point average of 3. 0 or above. 46. 6% of students with divorced or separated parents obtained a lesser GPA of 2. 9 or lower. Discussion Our data didnt turn out to be as drastically contrasting as we expected, in fact some of our statistics argued against our hypothesis.This has a lot to do with the discover that the experiment was performed. Because we are in Utah, we experienced a large sample bias thinking Utah (especially Cache Valley) is a highly religious community. If we conducted the analogous experiment at a different high school or somewhere outside of Utah, our results would be dissimilar. This being because Mountain Crest is a predominantly high achieving school in the area of academics, and also because approximately students at MC come from LDS families with strong belief in family unity.This resulted in a low number of students from broken families to survey, and a high number of students from functional families to survey. If we were to do this experiment again, we would survey an even number of students with divorced parents and students with married parents, so our results would be more accurate. We might also consider surveying students from other schools to get a broader variety of students. We believe that the motive kids from broken families arent as successful in academic activities is because they begettert have the same amount of support from home that other students with happily married parents have.We assume that the st udents may have more stress from heightened contention at home. Students coming from functional families are more competent of maintaining a higher GPA because of higher support levels from family members. They also have less stress because they dont have the worry of relations with issue of balancing separated parents and siblings.