Every student has faced the dilemma: do I pull an all-nighter before an exam and reread the lecture slides for the third time? Or do I make sure to get a good night’s sleep? What is more important? Does more study time lead to higher results? Or does the way I study matter more? Let us explore whether the key to academic success is studying harder or smarter.
To begin, we can look at academic performance using a regression framework. Study time, and study strategy are treated as explanatory variables. These are considered the explanatory variables that will lead to the outcome, in this case, grades. Simply put, we look at the following linear model:
In this linear model Hoursi represents the total amount of hours spent studying. StudyStrategyi represents a metric showing the effectiveness of study strategies. is the error term which accounts for unobserved influences like students’ prior knowledge, their cognitive abilities, and their sleep quality.
So, what actually is effective studying? What study techniques can be used, and are scientifically seen as more effective? One study on this (Dunlosky et al. 2013) looked at 10 different study techniques where each one was evaluated on the utility of improving grades based on cognitive and educational psychology research. According to these findings, some beneficial techniques are:
· Practice Testing: Actively bringing information back to mind instead of passively rereading it.
· Distributed Practice: Spreading study sessions across multiple days.
· Interleaved Practice: Alternating between subjects or question types.
· Teaching Others: Actively explaining the material and answering questions.
On the other hand, methods such as highlighting, simply rereading or summarizing without engagement were found to be less effective. These findings are all supported by extensive literature (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006)
Empirical studies also emphasize the importance of study quality over study quantity. In a 2020 CBE––Life Sciences Education study they also observed that students using active learning strategies like self-testing, achieved much higher academic results than students who used less effective strategies. An interesting takeaway from this study is that the total number of hours studied, was not a strong predictor of academic performance.
Also, a working paper by Stinebrickner & Stinebrickner (2007), published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), applied an instrumental variable technique to estimate the causal impact of study time on academic performance. The study found that while more study time generally results in higher grades, the magnitude of this effect depends on how it is spent. Similar findings were also found in studies of microeconomics classes, where students who made frequent use of digital learning tools and applied active learning strategies, scored significantly higher on final exams than others.
When looking at the relationship between study behavior and academic performance, we notice some empirical concerns.
· Endogeneity: Individuals who use more effective methods may also have a greater natural ability or motivation, creating omitted variable bias. Incorporating instrumental variables such as random assignment to study skill treatments can help identify the causal effect of strategy selection.
· Measurement Error: Self-reported study time is likely to be imprecise, generating classical measurement error. This may reduce the estimated coefficients, underestimating the true effect of study time. More accurate data collection, like digital tracking, could be a remedy for this issue.
· Sample Selection: The analysis, which is based on exam results, does not cover students who did not participate in an exam. This could lead to sample selection bias.
Beyond these concerns, these findings also have important practical implications for students and educators alike. Being aware of the relative effectiveness of various study strategies can help the design of study skill workshops, academic support services, or even a course curriculum. These results emphasize the need for students to look at their own study habits. Instead of focusing on how much time is spent, students should focus on how that time is spent. Aiming for quality over quantity can lead to more sustainable and effective academic outcomes.
To conclude, whether one should study harder or smarter, the evidence suggests that using the right study techniques (like distributed practice and teaching) provide a significant advantage. While it remains beneficial to put in the study time, its effectiveness is greatly increased when paired with the right strategies. In a scenario of time and overwhelming academic pressure, optimizing study strategy is not a recommendation, but a necessity. Students who wish to maximize their academic performance must begin by optimizing the way they study, then focus on how much.