Summary: How Marijuana Use During College Affects Academics

Recreational use of marijuana has become more popular in the United States, especially in the college students. HealthDay’s reporter, Amy Norton, wrote a popular press article describing a research report about how marijuana use during college affects academics. Throughout the journal to journalism process reporters may not reliably report important research or misrepresent science (Morling, 2014). Although Norton used many direct quotes throughout her article, she could have described the experiment’s design better. In this analysis, I will examine how accurate Norton articulates about this psychological report. Amelia Arria, Kimberly Caldeira, Brittamy Bugbee,Kathryn Vicent, and Kevin O’Grady researched the academic consequences of marijuana use during college. The researchers collected data of 1,117 first year students by eight annual assessments (Arria, Caldeira, et al., 2015). The control assessment was done during their freshman year of college and contained a personal interview and questionnaires covering substance use, academic behaviors, and a broad range of other health-related information that lasted for two hours. This format and …show more content…
Also, her article describes a casual claim by using the verb leads (Norton, 2015). Association claim argues that one level of a variable is likely to be associated with a particular level of another variable. Clausal claim argues that one variable is responsible for changing the other (Morling, 2014). In the academic journal article, it states both causal and associative claims by expressing “marijuana more frequently during the first year of collage tended to skip more of their classes, contributed to their tendency to earn lower grades. Longitudal study increases in marijuana use over time predicted decline in GPA and delaying graduation several years later” (Arria, Caldeira, et al.,