Zebra Striping: More Data for the Case
http://alistapart.com/articles/zebrastripingmoredataforthecase

Enders, Jessica
List Apart, A
2008

Abstract:

I recently conducted a study into the helpfulness (or lack thereof) of zebra striping—the shading of alternate rows in a table or form. The study measured performance as users completed a series of tasks and found no statistically significant improvement in accuracy—and very little statistically significant improvement in speed when zebra stripes were implemented.