Correlation Between Online Gaming And School Productivity Of Senior High School Students

Abstract

An online game is a video game played over some form of computer network. Online games are ubiquitous on modern gaming platforms, including PCs, consoles and mobile devices, and span many genres, including first-person shooters, strategy games and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). This study was conducted to assess and to find out if there is a correlation between online gaming and school productivity of Senior High School students.

In this generation, there are thousands of teenagers who are engaging in playing online games. The participants of this study are 150 randomly selected Senior High School Students. In order to find out if online gaming affects the student’s school productivity, the researchers made use of online data gathering. The results showed that there is no significant correlation between the two variables. It is also stated that 39.3% of the respondents says that video games do not hinder them from doing school work. On the other hand, 60.7% of the respondents still manages to find the time to be productive and do school work. In the self-rating survey, respondents stated that video games do not affect or hinder them from doing school work. Based on the findings, senior high school students’ habit of playing video games frequently does little to no effect to their academic productivity. The research shows that even when they spend time playing video games, they still manage to get their school work done. This research is subject to change and lastly, the sample size is too small to get the accurate result of this study.

Introduction

In the early 1970's home computer games are open for the public especially when the game Pong existed. Electronic digital computers were built during World War II; it is made to aid the allied war effort against the axis power. However, it is said that it's impossible to be certain who developed the first computer game and even the effects of computer game in productivity have not been thoroughly explored. At some studies it says that a person who plays violent games may have a small negative effect on their behavior. 70% of gamers is said to play in the same room and then 30% plays alone and because of that some researchers stated that it can help their social activity and even their teamwork abilities.

The prevalence of modern life brought more convenience to people’s way of living, that’s why it is a necessity for the humankind of today’s generation to be grateful to the large benefaction of the Internet. It serves as one of the most dominant media of communication and information sharing. Another advantage is that you can engage in business through this. It is also a means of entertainment and among others. Hence, it is undeniable that the Internet made our lives easier. With the advent of new technologies and along with it its entertainment area, such as video games, it has now become a diversion to each individual’s attention. However, they currently devote much of their leisure time into these. Gamers who are addicted to online gaming are not excused to having terrible habits that certainly impacts them negatively like lack of sleep, obesity, and social skills. Some of the mentioned traits will have adverse effects on their relationship, health, and jobs. Furthermore, social media has driven several people specifically teenagers to play online or video games with how it is presented daily on the Internet. The learning experience of students occurs unexpectedly, but the inappropriate usage of playing online games results in a few problems such as being distracted in school. Consequently, it is where the attention of the child was divided to the point that their health and social life are affected.

While negative effects of playing video games can easily be brought forward, Chandrasekharan et. al. (2010) research showed that video games can improve attention, mental rotation and spatial cognition. Furthermore, social behavior of gamers is drastically being improved by video games. Gamers are said to be gaining social skills and prosocial behavior and these skills are being honed by attending virtual social communities. So, while it is evident that there are a lot of publicized negative researches on playing online or computer games, it can still be said that playing such games can hone the capabilities of avid gamers or casual gamers alike. Video games will undeniably take a toll on devoted casual gamers be it negatively or positively. On average, 8 to 12 years-old usually plays up to 13 hours of gameplay per week, while those that are ages 13 to 18 years-old can rack up to 14 hours of gameplay per week. And the hours of gameplay will continue to rise as video games are rapidly evolving and improving garnering more attention from all ages. And almost all gamers are within the ages of much needed focus on academic performance and productivity.

On the grounds of school productivity, it is important for a student to observe it. Pressures, expectations, temptations especially when it comes to playing online games, and so on makes it feel impossible. In today’s access on the internet, students can easily access to the treasure trove of the world’s information. Despite of all these given resources, there’s a strong feeling that the student’s level of academic achievement and productivity has remained stagnant or fallen behind. For the productivity of a student, it is a must to track their time that cannot be contradicting when they play online games and prioritize it more than their school works. It will be difficult for a student to manage their personal time if they don't know how to spend it well. Students must set their deadlines, to know when it is time to play and not to play; to know what is important and what has need to be done before playing their online games.

Statement of the Problem

This study aims to find out if playing casually will have an effect on students’ ability to work on school tasks, and to determine if there is a correlation between senior high school students playing online video games and their school productivity.

Theoretical Framework

A study put forth by Shao-I, Jie-Zhi, and Der-Hsiang (2004) gave insights that there is indeed a decrease of performance when a student is addicted, not just casually playing a game. They found that a student that is too drawn in by video games is more likely to have less time to prepare academically. Their study focuses more on the connection of teenagers’ addiction to gaming and their capabilities of performing socially and academically. They’ve concluded that gaming addiction has predictive power when it comes to their academic grades and achievements. Our study will be based on their findings but will center on the students’ time spent on playing games and its effects towards academic productivity.

Research Gap

This study focused on senior high school students, a very small population of casual and avid student gamers in a world primarily dominated by technology that allows virtual gameplay. This paper primarily targeted random present senior high school students attending school as 11th and 12th graders. The researchers used survey questionnaires to gather answers from the respondents. This study is only limited to school productivity and only to senior high school students playing video games. Future studies and researchers about this matter should be widened and explored further. Such as expanding their target respondents to different age groups, including gamers that are already in the work force. Wherein people with jobs will definitely have a different perspective on productivity concerning their work.

Research Design

This research is a correlational design, wherein the researchers obtained the data through the use of survey questionnaires and assess the data gathered from the respondents to determine whether school productivity is affected if a student spends their time playing video games. This correlational study made use of snowball sampling wherein we randomly pick out respondents from a population, which are the senior high school students, then asked them to further send out our survey to other senior high school students. This study aims to discover if there is a correlation between the amount spent on playing video games and the productivity done by senior high school students and so the data that will be established will all be according to their responses. By finding out the correlation between the two variables, which are playing video games and their productivity on school works, the study will then fully discern if playing video games will truly compromise the productivity of students or whether or not it does not affect them at all.

Population / Sample Size

The respondents of this study are senior high school students that are conveniently selected and then referred to from different schools to make a snowball effect. Senior high school students are chosen for this study due to the fact they are primarily more exposed to new technology and to its entertainment area, which are video games. Turner et al. (2012) stated that about 85% of teenagers play video games and the age range of senior high school students fit into this category. Furthermore, students about their age are more frequently engaged in playing video games. The students must be attending their 11th and 12th grade as of this school year 2018-2019. The respondents required to input their grade level, age and gender on the survey questionnaire. The respondents will also be given the optional choice of whether they would like to put in their names in the survey questionnaires so they can ensure their confidentiality. The researchers will carefully explain the purpose and the process of the study to the selected respondents and why each of the students are selected. One hundred and fifty are selected through the use of snowball sampling. The senior high school students are the only source of data in discerning the correlation between the two variables.

Research Instrument

The researchers used a validated researcher-made self-rating survey. The survey was made using “Google Docs”. The survey consisted of a series of questions for the purpose of gathering data and information from the respondents. The survey consisted of fifteen self-rating statements for the respondents to answer and the answers that can be chosen are Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree and Strongly Disagree and were scored as 4 – 1 respectively. The survey can be answered within five to eight minutes. The survey was validated by an expert and it was revised and improved in accordance to the suggestion of the expert.

Sampling Procedure / Data Collection Method

The researchers made use of the idea of online data gathering and gathered the required data within the confines of social media and then sampling respondents through the use of snowball sampling – a sampling technique wherein existing respondents refer another respondent that fits the criteria of being a senior high school student. Using Google Docs as the platform, the researchers then messaged the conveniently sampled respondents to ask if they have the time to answer a survey. The survey will then be sent through private messages for them to answer and then the respondents are then asked to send the survey to other senior high school students creating a snowball effect. The respondents were thoroughly encouraged to answer the self-rating survey with honesty in order to significantly legitimize the data collected by the researchers. For this kind of study, the internet was the best place to gather and read different studies, researches and articles concerning our research. Then the researchers then focused on a few published materials to help approve and justify the findings of this research.

Data Analysis

After collecting the data that was gathered by the survey forms, the answers are then tallied by the researchers. The data gathered were then interpreted by the researchers by finding percentage of each self-rating statements that the survey presents. The independent variable of the study is video gaming, wherein the respondents were to answer much about their habits on playing video games. And then the dependent variable is their productivity on school works. The self-rating statements from the survey primarily focuses on the respondents’ habits on playing and doing school works. The researchers then filter the questions from the survey to focus on the significant data that was gathered from the survey, this was also done to avoid redundancy of the data and to ease the way to answering the statement of the problem. The survey items were focused on was survey item #4 and #5 wherein it fundamentally covers both independent and dependent variables. One-way Analysis of Variance or one-way ANOVA is then used to answer the research problem. The one-way ANOVA in this research is used to determine whether there are any significant differences between variables.

Results

All data gathered from different senior high school individuals were computed, interpreted and then analyzed. The two questions that were picked by the researchers that best fit to answer the research problem were then analyzed using Pearson R through Microsoft Excel. There is no significant correlation between playing online games and school productivity. Since the p-value was greater than the alpha, we concluded that there was a non-significant, weak positive correlation between the two variables. The data that was gathered states that 39.3% of the respondents says that video games do hinder them from doing school work. However, 60.7% of the respondents still manages to find the time to be productive and do school work. They stated in the self-rating survey that video games do not affect them or hinder them from doing school work. Furthermore, the gathered answers from the survey item no. 6 states that 80.7% of the respondents are still able to finish their school works despite playing video games.

Discussion

As shown in the results and data analysis, playing online video games has little to no relation or negative effect to the school productivity of senior high school students. 62% of the respondents answered that they still spend many hours doing school works even though 60.7% of the respondents stated that they are not hindered from doing school work by playing video games. School productivity causes good performance in the academic field, and with this the academic performance of the majority is not affected by playing online video games. This finding is inconsistent to a study put forth by Gentle et al. (2004), in which they stated those frequent video game players will demonstrate lack of productivity and will be performing poorly in the academic grounds. According to Kovess-Masfety et al. (2016), children that grew up associated with video games had a greatly increased chance of high intellectual functioning and overall school competence. Thus giving teenage video game players an advantage on academic performance and productivity. Productivity on school works is linked with performance on academics. If a student is productive enough, then they perform well on academics. Productivity is defined as the process of using inputs in schooling to increase desired outcomes such as academic achievement. Furthermore, Drummond & Sauer (2014) stated there is little connection between academic performance and video gaming and such challenges general claims of video game being a negative on studying and performance. In addition to that, the results of his study suggest that the impact is too small to be even considered troublesome and problematic for students thereby strengthening the results of this study. While the majority of studies say that there are negatives between the two variables, this study suggests that there is no significant correlation between online gaming and school productivity.

Recommendation

The discrepancies on studies about playing video games and affecting the academic capabilities, productivity and performance of students whether negatively or positively maybe subjective to different individual students. Further studies about this matter should focus try to focus the qualitative nature of this research, wherein the attitudes and personalities of each and individual students should be considered when they play video games and be productive in their academics. The result gathered by the researchers only covers a small margin of the gaming community, future studies should also reach out to the different population of video game players, not just teenagers or students. The ability for video games to stimulate academic productivity or performance should also be further studied or looked upon. If future researchers will use this study as their basis, they should increase the sample size into a more significant amount for them to have a more accurate result. Further improving the quality of this research is a must due to the fact that this specific topic is always subjective to change. Using this as a guideline for future study about this and then further concretizing the results and the data should decrease the discrepancy between the negatives and positives of playing video games.

References

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