Study this

Today's "Well, duh" story:

First-year students whose roommates brought a video game player to college studied 40 minutes less each day on average, according to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Those 40 minutes of lost study time translated into first-semester grades that were 0.241 points lower on the 4.0 grade scale.

The study's authors, Todd Stinebrickner, an associate professor of economics at the University of Western Ontario, and his father, Ralph Stinebrickner, a professor of mathematics and computer science at Berea College in Kentucky, were not trying to prove anything about video games. The study sought to determine how much of an effect study efforts have on grades.

The Stinebrickners say that it might seem obvious that more studying equals better grades. But research has been unable to prove it.

"Everyone knows that studying must matter to some extent, but we just don't know how much it matters relative to other things," such as college entrance exam scores, Todd Stinebrickner says. "And this study shows that it matters quite a lot."