lipaz/StudentHabitsvsAcademicPerformance

Student Habits vs Academic Performance

Dataset & Analysis by Lipaz Levy

This project explores how students’ daily habits — including study hours, sleep, social media use, lifestyle factors, mental health, exercise, diet quality, and more — influence their academic performance.

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We used a dataset of 1001 students, each with lifestyle habits, well-being indicators, and exam scores.
The goal was to answer:

How do students’ daily habits affect their exam performance?

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Data Cleaning & Preprocessing

Before performing analysis, several preprocessing steps were required to clean and prepare the dataset.

1. Checked for missing values

• No missing values were found.

2. Fixed formatting issues

• Trimmed spaces from categorical values (“ Yes” → “Yes”).

3. Encoded categorical variables for correlations & regressions

Added encoded columns:

• diet_quality_encoded

  • Poor → 0
  • Fair → 1
  • Good → 2

• internet_quality_encoded

  • Poor → 0
  • Average → 1
  • Good → 2

4. Converted columns to numeric

Ensured all measurement columns were floats:

• study_hours_per_day
• sleep_hours
• social_media_hours
• netflix_hours
• exercise_frequency
• attendance_percentage
• exam_score

5. Dataset shape

• Original: 1001 rows × 16 columns
• After encoding: 1001 rows × 18 columns

6. Outlier check

• All values were within valid human ranges.
• No rows were removed.

Main Research Question

How do students’ daily habits affect their exam performance?
(study hours, sleep, social media, lifestyle factors)

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Sub-Questions Analyzed

Q1: Does studying more hours improve exam performance?

Result: Strong positive correlation.

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Q2: Does sleeping longer lead to higher grades?

Result: Weak but positive correlation.

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Q3: Does more time on social media reduce exam results?

Result: Very weak negative effect.

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Q4: Does internet quality influence exam performance?

Result: No meaningful correlation.

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Q5: Do students with part-time jobs perform differently?

Result: No major difference.

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Q6: Does gender influence academic performance?

Result: Small differences, not significant.

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Q7: Does exercise frequency improve exam outcomes?

Result: Light positive trend.

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Q8: Does watching more Netflix lower exam performance?

Result: Moderate negative effect.

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Q9: Does attendance percentage affect exam scores?

Result: Very small positive relationship.

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Q10: Does better mental health predict higher exam performance?

Result: Clear positive effect.
Mental health is one of the strongest predictors.

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Q11: Does diet quality correlate with exam scores?

Result: Minimal effect.

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Additional Analysis

Correlation Heatmap of All Variables

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Dataset Structure (Data Dictionary)

Column Name	Description
student_id	Unique student ID
age	Age of the student
gender	Male/Female/Other
study_hours_per_day	Hours studied per day
sleep_hours	Sleep duration in hours
social_media_hours	Daily hours spent on social media
netflix_hours	Hours spent watching Netflix
part_time	Whether student works (Yes/No)
attendance_percentage	Class attendance percent
sleep_hours	Sleep duration
diet_quality	Poor / Fair / Good
exercise_frequency	Weekly exercise frequency
parental_education_level	Parent education (High school, Bachelor, Master…)
internet_quality	Poor/Average/Good
mental_health_rating	Scale 1–10
extracurricular	Participates in activities (Yes/No)
exam_score	Final exam score

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Conclusion

Study time, mental health,sleeping hours and exercise show positive influence on exam scores.
Netflix hours and heavy social media use show negative or weak negative effects.
Lifestyle factors such as attendance, diet, and internet quality matter less than expected.

Students who balance healthy routines — good study habits, sleep, mental well-being, and moderate screen time — tend to perform better academically.

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Project Completed by

Lipaz Levy
Reichman University — Data Analysis Project