Hope is not lost

In a previous post I brought to your attention a small study that was conducted by a graduate student at THE Ohio State University showing a correlation between Facebook use and lower GPA's in college students. That little piece of research, apparently, has generated quite a bit of buzz, and USA Today is now reporting on a follow-up study conducted by a group of researchers that seems to show no correlation between academic performance and Facebook use:

The newer research, published this week in an online journal First Monday, found no "robust negative relationship between Facebook use and grades. Indeed. If anything, Facebook use is more common among individuals with higher grades." Northwestern University professor Eszter Hargittai, Stanford doctoral candidate Josh Pasek and Eian More, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, analyzed three existing data sets, including a sample of more than 1,000 undergraduates from the University of Illinois-Chicago and other data involving teens and young adults. [...]

In a statement published in First Monday, the authors of the larger study said they were motivated to "set the record straight" because of the surge of public interest generated by the media. "Our primary criticism of the...study was not in reference to her results, but rather to the process of alerting the mass media without probability-based sampling, replication or comprehensive peer review."