STUDY HABITS AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN RELATION TO THEIR GENDER

Abstract

The way students’ study has a big impact on their lives. Every student's ability to succeed or fail is based on their individual study habits. Although some students study more, they don't accomplish as much as others who study less yet do more. Success of each student definitely depends upon ability, intelligence and study habits of students. Even a good student who has the potential to achieve better, may not be able to achieve as per expectations if he fails to do proper management of time, allocation of weight age to various subject preparation notes and individual modes adopted for preparation of different subjects. So, in order to improve the quality of education and academic achievement of students we must develop certain innovative strategies, which will enhance the educational standards. In addition to this, from the student's side there must be some important steps, which form the basis for their academic achievement. Study habits are of utmost importance in this world which is full of competition and has a direct relationship with the academic achievement of children. The purpose of the research is to find out the differences in the study habits of secondary school students with respect to their gender, type of school, residential background and their achievement level. For the same purpose, a standardized tool namely Study Habits Scale (SHS) by Dimple Rani and M.L. Jaidka was used. The investigator adopted the Descriptive Survey Method to collect the data. Two hundred students were selected through Random Sampling Technique. In order to analyze the data, statistical techniques namely Percentage, t- Test and Pearson's coefficient correlation were employed. The results revealed that the majority of secondary school students have average and above average level of study habits. The results have shown that female secondary school students exhibited better scores on Study Habits Scale (SHS) than male students. The results of the present study also revealed that students studying in private secondary schools possess better study habits in comparison to students studying in government secondary schools. However, no significant difference was found in study habits of secondary school students in respect to their institute. Further, analysis revealed that urban secondary school students possess better study habits in comparison to rural secondary school students. Lastly, the results show that there was a strong positive correlation between study habits and academic achievement of secondary school students but not significant.