2. ABSTRACT
       The topic of our study was “Is your cumulative Grade Point Average (GPA) higher for living in a two or more parent household rather than living in a single parent household?”  We started the project by browsing the internet and looking for past data done on this topic.  We used Google.com to look for this data.  At first it was hard to find data on this topic, so we had to find different ways to type it into Google.  Towards the end of our search, we lucked out and found some data on our topic.  We later created a survey to determine if a student lived with one parent or more, their grade point average, and their age.  We used Minitab’s random generator on the list of all of North Olmsted High Schools students to get a random selection of 150 students.  From this we distributed surveys, and received our results.  We entered our data into Minitab and ran a two sample t-test to achieve our final results.

3. We got a p-value of 0.94, which is well above any reasonable level of significance.  So we failed to reject our null hypothesis at any reasonable level of significance because our P-value is much greater than Alpha (0.94).  Therefore, there is insufficient evidence to say that the true mean average of two-parent or higher household children have a higher Grade Point Average than those children from single parent households.  We also tested male versus female Grade Point Average, where our null hypothesis was there is no difference between the two genders and our alternative hypothesis was that there is a difference in the means between the two genders.  We rejected the null hypothesis at the 0.05 level of significance because our p-value was less than Alpha.  Therefore, we have sufficient evidence to say that there is a difference in the true mean grade point average between males and females.  Even though we have gotten both conclusions, we still have some weakness in our studies.  For example, we had a good amount of response bias, with people not filling out all of their survey.  Also, some people might have written down false grade point averages.  Our findings could be extrapolated to cities that are near the same population as _________our city ____, and those of that our suburbs to a major city and not near the inner city.

4. THE PURPOSE
The purpose of our project is to find out if children coming from a one adult household have lower Grade Point Averages (GPA) than those coming from households with 2 or more adults.  We were interested in trying to see if there is a relationship because when we look at the local elementary schools, we tend to see that a student coming from a one adult household seems to not understand the same materials that a child from a two or more adult household does. We both wanted to know if it was true that the number of adults living in a household affects the Grade Point Average.

5. THE BACKGROUND
       For the first part of our research, we used the Google search engine.  The first thing we searched on Google was “grade point average and single-family household.”  We found a website:
       This website had a study done where they compared a students GPA (Grade Point Average) to their household, just like we are attempting.  They found that in their study, in all but one case, when given the California Achievement Tests, the people with two or more parent/adult households had higher test scores than people with a single parent/adult household.  There was also a homogenous nature to the population for this study conducted by this group.
        Next, we used Google again to search up the phrase “single parenting and children’s academic achievement.”  We located a website that had also done research on family structure.  
       This website gives us many different sources of data, such as that since 1984, 60% of children in the United States would spend at least 5 years of their childhood in a single parent household.  That is 3 out of every 5 children that would do this.  Also, it states that 30% of the children will only stay in a single parent household their entire life! 

6. This also shows that if two kids have the same academic achievement, one being from a single parent household, and the other from a two-parent household, that the single parent household child is three times more likely to drop out than the child from the two-parent household.  They give a small conclusion that to this day, there is no definite answer to the question of “Does Single Parenting Negatively Influence Academic Achievement?”  Another fact that they include is if they live in a mother-absent household, they are more likely to struggle in science courses than if they are in a father-absent household.

7. They help us with a theory as to why it seems like single parent households have lower academic success.  They state that because the adult is (usually) the primary source of income for the family, they have less time to help their children with school work to help improve their grades. 
       After this, we kept using Google.com to try to find research on this data.  However, we were very unsuccessful in finding this data.  When we typed out entries into Google, such as “grade point average affected by parents,” we got many results of what GPA stands for, and the definition of Grade Point Average.  Also, we found many results on tips to improve you grade point average in college and/or high school.
       Next, we searched (using Google) “students grades affected by parents.”  Again, we could not find any useful results.  We were only able to locate things such as “Follow your sons/daughters Grade Point Average online!” or “Show your students grades to parents online.” 

8. After this we reattempted to use Google again to search “student grades relation to parents.”  We got our results of our search, and they did not turn out as we hoped for.  We were only able to locate things like “Should parents be graded just like children are in school?”
       Later, once more, we used our beloved Google.com to search yet another phrase for us, “Students grades, and parent’s relation.” Again, we achieved poor search results.  Most of the results we achieved were along the lines of “Should parents be allowed to follow their child’s grades online?” or “Should schools be allowed to show parents their sons or daughters grades via the internet?”
       As we keep trying to find results via Google.com, we decided to search up our newest phrase, “students GPA and parent household.”  Finally, we have gotten bad results for our 5th time!  We only achieved a test that had been done, where the question at hand was “Do good looks get students good grades?”
       FINALLY, we searched “students gpa and parent household.”  We found one result of a test on single parent households and more.  The website we located was:
       This website gives us statistical data.  It states that “Students from one-parent households have test scores that are about .30 standard deviations lower [than that of students from two-parent households.]  Both mother absence and father absence reduce students’ grades, by .17 and .27 standard deviations, respectively.”  This shows us some statistical evidence to prove that one-parent households have lower educational levels than those from two-parent households.

9. THE STUDY
            First, we started by trying to obtain a sample of 160 North Olmsted High School students, which would be about 10.0% of the students of North Olmsted High School.  We later changed that to only 150 students, because we found the correct number of students much less than we thought, and we need to have less than 10.0% of the population.  We thought 1,602, however it was more around 1,530.  We decided 150 would be a good sample to send out.  We opened the list of all the students in _____________________ HS that we got to use for this survey, and used a random generator to randomly select 150 students.  We obtained the list of those 150 selected students from this randomization. 

17. THE DISCUSSION - Weakness
       Some weaknesses presented in our study were response-error related to our survey. For example, people would select two or more parents and only select one as either working full time, part time, or unemployed. Some students also responded without knowing their cumulative grade point average. We also had some non-response bias, where we did not receive all the surveys we had originally sent out. Of all the surveys sent out, we had 80.00% returned to us.  Out of all of the surveys, we could use 70.66% of the surveys.  Also, we had 9.33% of our surveys that had some sort of response bias on them, and 20.00% of the surveys were not returned to us. 
       There could have been many other questions on our surveys as well, because we don’t know every individuals exact situation. A confounding variable for this study might be that we took students cumulative grade point average and not their recent grade point average. If we would have taken students current grade point average we might see more of the effects of the economy. For instance, we might see the upper classmen’s grade point average change because their grades might be affected from a part time job they might have to hold because of our recent economy crisis. We also believe that this study might have been more effective with younger students. With the economy the way it is, we believe we will start to see the true impact in years to come. One extraneous factor of this is that more parents will have to hold a job leaving less time to help their children with school work.

18. THE DISCUSSION - Extrapolation
       Our study could be extrapolated to many different high schools across the nation.  This study is most relevant in suburbs similar to North Olmsted, Ohio or maybe somewhat smaller than North Olmsted.  Some areas that it might not be extrapolated to are the inner city of large cities such as Cleveland, Ohio, or Chicago, Illinois.  These cities have many struggling families and violence where the dropout rate is very low, and students do not learn as much due to these factors.
THE DISCUSSION - Suggestions for Further Work
Further work in our area of study can include having a more in depth survey.  We would want to increase our population in order to make sure our sample size is always over 30 for both single and paired parents.  The study could also be extended to determine if children from parents who work full time have a lower Grade Point Average than those parents who work part time.  We could also compare the younger generations of students to older ones to see if there is any differences.  One final question that could be asked is:  Is the economy taking an affect on students grade point averages?

19. THE CONCLUSION
       We failed to reject our null hypothesis at any reasonable level of significance because our P-value is much greater than Alpha (0.94).  Therefore, there is insufficient evidence to say that the true mean grade point average from students from single-parent households differs from the true mean grade point average from students from two or more parent households.
       In a test for male versus female Grade Point Average, where our null hypothesis was there is no difference between the two genders and our alternative hypothesis was that there is a difference in the means between the two genders.  We rejected the null hypothesis at the 0.05 level of significance because our p-value was less than Alpha.  Therefore, we have sufficient evidence to say that there is a difference in the true mean grade point average between males and females.