Eating Breakfast And Higher Gpas example essay topic

Worobey, J., & Worobey, H. (1999). The Impact of a Two-Year School Breakfast Program for Preschool-Aged Children on Their Nutrient Intake and Pre-Academic Performance. Child Study Journal, 29,113-131. This study contains information dealing with the relationship between nutrition and academic performance. The A variable consists of eating a well-balanced breakfast with a School Breakfast Program (SBP), while the B variable consists of pre-academic performance. The procedure these researchers used to study a nutritional breakfast was to provide preschoolers with a SBP.

Every morning that the children attended school, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the preschoolers who participated would arrive at school at 8: 15 a.m. and would eat breakfast in the dining hall until 9: 00 a.m. when class would begin. The students were offered a breakfast that consisted of a serving of milk, a serving or fruit or vegetable or full-strength juice, and two servings of bread or meat or bread or meat-alternatives. The children could eat what they wished of the possible choices and every child ate breakfast on all the days it was available. The parents of the first randomly assigned group were asked to maintain breakfast log to keep a record of the breakfasts that the child ate on the days they did not attend school. The same routine was administered to the next randomly assigned group that was evaluated.

Next each child in the experiment was tested for about 20 to 30 minutes each. These tests all took place before the daily snack was served. The pre-academic performance was observed through a series of tests that did not test General Intelligence. Instead they tested cognitive performance through memory games and mazes. These test included: Mazes, The Preschool Embedded Figures Test, Verbal Memory, Numerical Memory, Pattern Match, and Same of Different. Another study was constructed that only differed in the fact that a control group of student was used to compare to the group having the SBP.

These students were given breakfast at home, keeping a log of what they ate. The tests administered were the same as in the first study. The sample in the first study consisted of twelve pre-school aged children, five girls and seven boys ranging from the age of 3 years, 10 months to 5 years, 2 months. The sample in the second study consisted of 19 children from the class this time.

There were nine children that enrolled in the program, 6 females and 3 males. Seven served as control subjects. The sample was obtained by asking the parents of the 20 children in a morning pre-school class which met on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays. The eight children who did not participate the first time and the 3 that did not participate the second time gave reasons such as not being able to bring the child to school that early because of conflicts of bus schedules with their other children. Others simply did not wish to complete the breakfast record forms.

The children in the study are middle-class and above-average in educational level. The parents were informed of the study through a form that was sent home describing the experiment along with a consent and breakfast enrollment form. The children were offered the breakfast free of charge, and there was no penalty for not participating. The SBP study showed that breakfast is essential to the nutritional health of children while aiding in physical growth and development. This test showed that a nutritional breakfast showed positive effects on attentions, alertness, and many other important kill for academic performance. The SBP improved performance on the standardized achievement test and other cognitive tests that were administered.

The children did better in general when they were tested after the school breakfast program than they did after the home breakfast. Performance on the Mazes and the Patter Match and Same -Different were significantly higher in the children who were enrolled in the SPB. This study was a "good study". It clearly tested the operational variables in relevant manor. The data was factual and was not manipulated. A control group was administered to compare the outcome of the experiment.

Those that observed the children were blind as to which were enrolled in the program and which were not, preventing biased data. The experiment was repeated twice and similar outcomes were reached both times. The study tested children that were not in anyway malnourished, prevented the factor that the children may improve academically because they were not eating, rather they wanted to test to see if a well balanced breakfast could increase things such as interest motivation, and concentration. This way they had a more solid background to base the data on.

(DD) Kid Source. (1998). [Online]. New Harvard Research Program Show that School Breakfast Programs May Improve Children's Behavior and Performance. Available: web [2002, February 1]. There is a strong relation among nutrition and academic performance according to Harvard research.

The A variable, the nutritional intake by students has been studied used a School Breakfast Program that has been administered in many schools. The programs that were observed, in Philadelphia and two Baltimore public schools were free. The B variable consisted of academic performance. The academic performance was measured by observing overall improvement in grades in the schools that participated.

The sample in the study came from the Philadelphia and Baltimore public schools. In these schools, 133 students were observed before and after the free School Breakfast Program began. About one-third of the students being studied ever ate breakfast at school before. After the program, the number of subjects eating breakfast at school nearly doubled and overall reports demonstrated that students were significantly more attentive in the classroom and earned higher grades in math. There proved to be a strong correlation between nutrition through breakfast and academic performance in the students observed. This study shows correlation between nutrition and academic success, yet it is not a good study.

It fails to indicate how the children were chosen to participate in the study or any other detail about the students observed except for the effect the breakfast program had on them. It is not a good representation of the entire population of student and their effect on a nutritional breakfast. It also failed to recognize what type of breakfast these children were eating. (DD) Trockel, M.T., Barnes, M.D., e.g. get, & D.L. (2000). Health-Related Variables and Academic Performance Among First-Year College Students: Implications for Sleep and Other Behaviors.

Journal of American College Health, 49,125-131. This study correlated the effect of health-behavior variables that had a potential relationship to academic performance. The health-behaviors were tested obtained through a pencil and paper questionnaire. This questionnaire was devised from health-behavior variables that would potentially predict academic performance, one of these variables being nutrition, especially through breakfast. The questions were given possible responses to these factors. For validity purposes, professionals in all the health-behavior areas, to make sure the questions were clear, edited the test.

The academic performance was obtained by winter semester GPA's along with gender and age. The sample was devised of 200 randomly assigned first year students from the entire dormitory population of a private university. The names were entered into a lottery for cash prizes for those who participated in the study. The survey was mailed to the students with a consent form to allow their winter semester GPAs to be released to the principal investigator.

After three days a reminder was sent for those who had not responded to the survey. Then right days later a letter was sent telling the students that did not respond that an investigator would call them to take the survey on the telephone. Trained graduate students where the ones who administered the test over the phone. Out of the original sample size, 142 responded to the survey by mail, 43 responded to the survey through the telephone, while one of the 185 participants who complete the survey did not give permission to have their GPA released. As a result of the survey, spearman's correlation analyses displayed correlation between higher first year college GPAs and eating breakfast. However, the relationship between not eating breakfast and higher GPAs could have been a collinear relation to sleeping-habit factors, since those who woke up earlier have a better chance of eating breakfast.

After controlling the effects of weekend and weekday wake up time, the study demonstrated that eating breakfast did not significantly affect the GPA. However, eating breakfast did prove to improve real and spatial memory among the students. No other nutritional-related variable had a significant effect on student GPA. This was for the most part, a "good study" to test the relationship between health related factors and GPAs. The students were randomly assigned and the tests given to measure any correlation were valid tests that were reviewed by professionals in the areas.

The part that was bad was the fact that the survey consisted of students that were available to respond. They were all at the same university. I think a wider sample that included student at different universities may have given a better representation of college students and the effects of nutrition. (DD).