Understand how students’ habits, lifestyle, and psychological factors influence learning outcomes and academic performance.
This article demonstrates our academic performance and lifestyle research approach using a public student dataset to protect participant confidentiality.
In today’s competitive academic environment, students face growing pressure — not only from their peers but also from emerging technologies such as AI that are rapidly reshaping learning and expectations. This heightened demand can significantly impact their psychological wellbeing. To better understand which lifestyle and behavioral factors are most closely linked to academic performance, we analyzed an open-source Kaggle dataset, containing information on 2,000 students. The dataset includes variables such as daily study hours, extracurricular involvement, sleep patterns, social interactions, physical activity, stress levels, gender, and grades — providing a comprehensive foundation for exploring how these factors influence both achievement and mental health.
The dataset comprises responses from 2,000 university students in Lisbon, collected through a Google Form survey during the academic year from August 2023 to May 2024. It captures a range of lifestyle and academic indicators, including study hours, extracurricular activities, sleep patterns, socializing, physical activity, stress levels, and CGPA. This information provides valuable insight into how daily habits may influence academic performance and overall wellbeing.
Our research reveals that the majority of students in the dataset achieve above-average academic performance, with grades most commonly falling between 6.5 and 8.5 and peaking around the 7.5–8.0 range. This balanced distribution, with relatively few students at the extreme high or low ends, suggests a generally consistent level of achievement across the sample and provides a strong basis for exploring how lifestyle and behavioral factors influence performance.
Our gender-based lifestyle and performance analysis reveals that male and female students in the dataset exhibit remarkably similar behaviors and academic results. Both groups report nearly identical averages in study time, extracurricular engagement, sleep, and social interactions, with only marginal differences in physical activity and stress levels. Academic performance, measured by average grades, is also almost the same, with males slightly ahead at 7.80 compared to females at 7.78. These minimal variations suggest that gender alone does not significantly influence the observed lifestyle patterns or academic outcomes. To gain deeper insights, it is essential to examine the correlations between grades and other behavioral factors, which may reveal the true drivers of performance beyond demographic differences.
The correlation analysis shows that students’ grades are strongly and positively related to the number of study hours per day, indicating that more studying tends to lead to higher academic performance. However, both grades and study hours are also strongly linked to higher stress levels, suggesting that academic success may come at the cost of increased psychological pressure. Greater study time is associated with reduced physical activity, and higher-achieving students also tend to engage less in physical exercise. Sleep hours show no meaningful relationship with grades but are moderately negatively related to stress, meaning stressed students tend to sleep less. Social and extracurricular activities have little to no direct effect on grades, though they show slight negative relationships with study time and physical activity. Overall, the data suggests that while dedicating more time to studying improves grades, it also increases stress and reduces physical activity, with minimal impact from social or extracurricular engagement.
We aimed to create recommendations for students on the optimal daily values of study hours, extracurricular involvement, sleep, social time, and physical activity that would maximize grades while minimizing stress. Our model suggested targets such as 7.5 hours of study, 2 hours of extracurricular activity, 8 hours of sleep, 3 hours of socializing, and 4 hours of physical activity — leading to a predicted grade of 7.76 and a stress level of 2.27. However, these recommended values are already very close to the averages students currently achieve. This means that in practice, significantly lowering stress while maintaining the highest possible grades is challenging, and students must prioritize between the two.
To better guide these choices, we prepared a table showing how specific adjustments in daily habits would impact grades or stress levels individually. Our analysis reveals, for example, that increasing study time by approximately 0.32 hours per day is associated with an average grade improvement of 0.1 points, while reducing it by around 0.30 hours may lower stress by the same amount. Interestingly, factors such as extracurricular activities, social hours, and physical activity show trade-offs — where increasing them tends to reduce stress but may slightly decrease grades. These findings highlight the balance students must navigate between maximizing academic outcomes and maintaining psychological wellbeing, underscoring the importance of targeted lifestyle optimization strategies.
We studied student lifestyle data to better understand how daily habits, academic performance, and stress levels interact — with a particular focus on how studying impacts psychological wellbeing and how mental health, in turn, can influence performance. By analyzing patterns in study time, extracurricular activities, sleep, socializing, physical activity, and stress, we found that while increased study hours are strongly linked to higher grades, they also contribute to elevated stress and reduced physical activity. Social and extracurricular engagements have minimal direct effect on grades but can help relieve stress, revealing important trade-offs between achievement and mental health. Gender-based analysis showed negligible differences in behavior and results, suggesting that lifestyle factors, rather than demographics, are the real drivers of outcomes.
Achieving the ideal balance between academic performance and psychological wellbeing is a highly individual process. Each student must reflect on their current state — asking whether their stress levels are too high, their grades lower than desired, or if their daily routine feels sustainable — and then decide which aspects of their lifestyle need adjustment. For some, this may mean dedicating more time to study; for others, it could mean prioritizing rest, social connection, or physical activity. Our “change needed” table provides a numerical roadmap, showing precisely how much each habit would need to shift to either raise grades or reduce stress. In practice, these insights can be applied by students to set realistic personal goals, by academic advisors to guide tailored study plans, and by mental health professionals to design interventions that protect wellbeing while supporting achievement. Rather than prescribing a one-size-fits-all formula, this approach empowers individuals to make informed, data-driven choices that align with their own priorities and capacity.
View the full code behind this analysis in our Google Colab notebook.