major categories listed above
Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Participants were required to have
completed at least 1 year or 24 credit hours at the university (mean credit
hours = 58.52, SD = 27.39) to insure that there were enough credit hours to produce
a meaningful GPA. Participants were drawn from classes in the departments of Psy-
chology and Education as well as from sports teams at the university. The mean age
of the participants was 19.82 years (SD = 1.19). All participants signed informed consent documents and release forms for their official university records.
2.2. Procedure
Participation took place in group sessions (typically 15–20 students) in classrooms
at the university. Participants were given a packet of materials including a Time
Allocation and Academic Performance questionnaire, seven time log forms, and se-
ven stamped and addressed envelopes. Participants were given an overall explana- tion of the study and the procedure to be followed for completing the time logs.
Participants then completed the questionnaire, which took approximately 45min.
Participants were asked to complete the time logs on a day-to-day basis over the next
week and mail the completed forms to the investigators daily. Most participants fol-
lowed the instructions for remitting the completed forms, but some participants re-
turned multiple completed forms at the same time. The overall purpose of the
procedure was to maintain an awareness of their daily activities so that they could
be accurately reported.
2 Although these measures capture objective characteristics that make deliberate practice more likely,
they do not directly measure the quality of study. We chose to focus on observable, objective behaviors
that we believe to be associated with high quality deliberate practice as opposed to more direct assessments
of self-reported quality of study in order to avoid potential subjective biases in the direct quality ratings.
104 E.A. Plant et al. / Contemporary Educational Psychology 30 (2005) 96–116
2.3. Materials
2.3.1. Official university records
The University official records were used to acquire information regarding the
participants� grade point averages from high school and college level courses ac- cepted by the university prior to the current semester on a four-point scale (e.g.,
A = 4.0). In addition, participants� SAT/ACT scores were collected. To create a sin- gle standardized test score, students ACT scores were transformed into SAT scores
using the University�s equivalency formula. In addition, the GPA for the fall semes- ter during which the study was conducted was obtained from the official university
records after the end of the semester.
2.3.2. Time allocation and academic performance questionnaire
The questionnaire packet was designed to elicit information from the participants
regarding their academic performance at the university and the factors that may
influence their academic performance. The questionnaire assessed background infor-
mation, academic history, university academic performance, time allocation, and
study methodologies.
From the major categories listed above, questions bearing directly on the current
investigation were selected for analysis. Participants reported the percentage of basic
core classes (i.e., English, mathematics, and major courses) that they had attended. They were also asked to report the percentage of their most difficult class and their
second most difficult class that they attended. These percentages were averaged to
create the class attendance variable (a = .73). The time allocation section asked participants to report the number of hours a
week they spent in a variety of activities. Relevant for the current investigation, par-
ticipants were asked to report the number of hours a week they spent working for
pay (hours of work) as well as the number of hours a week they spent at parties
or clubs (hours partying). In addition, planning practices were obtained by examin- ing how participants reported that they most often planned their time. Participants
