Workin' In the Classroom

   For the past couple months, a friend of mine and I have been working, amongst many other projects, on a sociological research study.  We were looking into what different aspects of the classroom, or factors outside the classroom, had the greatest effect on a student's grades.
   Sadly, it was too hard for us to control and monitor and examine the performance of students under different circumstances, so we settled for using surveys and interviews to determine what people found most important for them.  In particular, we tried to look at factors that might affect students' grades in a particular class, rather than their grades in general.  For example, sleep affects all a student's grades, but the approachability of a teacher only affects the grades for the class that teacher gives.
   What we concluded was that a student's interest was the most common and most important factor, but that aside, it seemed like students generally found things their teachers have a hand in to be why they do well in class.  There were no particular stand out factors that had a huge negative effect, although there the balance turned towards things teachers didn't have a hand in.

If anyone is interested in the complete analysis, I'm leaving a link to the paper here.