While undergoing a worthy comparison of student results from past years, I discovered a tremendous decline in academic performances. From my experiences as a teacher and a student counselor, I made a reasonable guess that the decline in academic performances might be due to the influence of peer pressure and lack of proper time management of students to a large extent. To confirm how true my guesses are, I embark on a research to statistically analyze the impacts of these unbearable attitudes of students on their academic performance.
Let me buttress my point from a particular experience I had with some of my students so that you can know how much peer pressure has eaten deep into the souls and spirits of our youth. There was a group of six notorious boys is a school known to be an expert rapist, the boys were between the age of 17 - 18 years. what they do is to lure junior female students to be raped during break time and sometimes after school hours in a building close to the school. The boys use to threaten the reaped students that they will be killed if the ever tell anybody about the rape incidence. They finally got exposed when a girl was raped and got blood discharge in her vagina. You can simply guess what will happen to such students.
I have also experienced cases where peer pressure has provoked, challenged and motivated students to bring out the best in them academically. Though such case is not common compared to the frequent occurrence of a negative influence of peer pressure reports.
I will discuss the details of this research work because I want to give to you all materials and instrument needed so as to encourage you to carry out similar research on some students in your environment to know the extent of peer pressure on them. Such instrument can also be used to investigate the potency of peer pressure on your children especially in their schools and to know the behavioral manners of the kind of peer group they keep. This will allow you to correct some of the bad influence of peer pressure on your children before things get out of hand.
Picture taken by me during questionnaire distribution to students
Soon I will let the cat out of the bag and let you know the outcome of my seemingly little research. But before then I will like to discuss some of the research topic terms; Peer pressure, time management, and academic performance to really bust your understanding of the topic of discussion.
Let the discussion begins!
There are various definitions and descriptions for explaining peer pressure which is based on various opinions, exposure, and experiences of academics and researchers. Some of these definitions are described below. Peer pressure is described as an unnatural and unhealthy development of adolescents beginning at an early age and increases through the teenage years to influence the social and emotional decisions and actions of adolescents. Such influences usually occur among teenagers of the same age bracket. It is an emotional or and mental forces or influence that causes people of the same age, status, group, tribe, religion to behave in a similar or the same manner. It is the ability of a group or an individual to forcefully influence another group of people or an individual to embrace their lifestyles. I will describe peer pressure as the external force that influences the decisions or and actions of a group of people of the same age to do something that they wouldn't have done without the imposed force.
Naturally, teenagers will depend on each other to make some decisions as they grow together, thereby influencing themselves. The influence can either be positive or negative; teenagers can engage in negative influence associated with drug deals, drug abuse, arm robbery, voluntary absence from school, theft etc while the positive influence is associated with inculcating reading habit, organizing group tutorial, engaging in voluntary charity group, to mention but a few. Peer pressure presents in various ways and manners, it does not only affects teenagers but its elements can be felt in all age brackets, tribes and races.
Lack of proper time management structure by students is also one of the major cause of mass failure and decline in academic performances of students. Proper time management is the ability of an individual (students) to properly schedule or allocated time for his or her day to day activities and following it or adhere to it strictly and sequentially. The major time schedule expected from a student is to allocate time to read and study his or her books by preparing a functional timetable that speeds across all courses of study. Allocation of time to the task according to their order of impotence can be achieved using tools such as calendar, planner, timetable, reminder alarm system. These tools help us to gain proper management and control of our time to achieve the desired purpose and objectives.
Time management is an act and habit that should be inculcated by everyone, be you a student, a teacher, a trader, an artist, a business man, an athlete, as a leader, corporate organizations and in all other professions you can think of because proper time management means proper self-management. As for the general saying that punctuality is a sole of a business is simply talking about proper time management in business to enhance its growth. Proper time management shows that you are responsible and up to the task. In fact, time management as a course is being recommended to all workers across all strata of both private and governmental organizations and establishments as a tool to enhance their productivity. Procrastination should not be allowed in our schedule and plan of time.
Academic performance of a student can be described as the ability of a student to remember what has been thought by an instructor or a teacher and being able to reciprocate it by reproducing it either verbally in an oral interview or written form during an examination. The score or grade of such interview or examination described the performance of the student. The academic performance record of a student is a tool that reflects and describes the academic status of a student.
Picture taken by me during questionnaire distribution to students
The objectives of the research are to find out the level of peer pressure and time management among students of the same class, to determine if there is a significant relationship between peer pressure and academic performance of students, determine if there is a significant relationship between time management and academic performance of students. The findings shall involve all categories of students in the school of study.
The research hypotheses are as follows:
Hypothesis 1
- H0: Peer pressure poses a significant effect on academic performance of students.
- H1: Peer pressure does not have a significant effect on academic performance of students.
Hypothesis 2
- H0: Time management poses a significant effect on academic performance of students.
- H1: Time management does not have a significant effect on academic performance of students.
Hypothesis 3
- H0: Peer pressure and Time management significantly affect the academic performance of students.
- H1: Peer pressure and Time management significantly affect the academic performance of students.
The significance of the null hypothesis shall be tested at a significance level of 0.05
To prepare the research instrument (questionnaire) entails preparing series of constructive questions for students to answer. The questions are prepared to contain four levels of answer options depending on the student opinion. Such answer options include: Strongly agreed (SA), Agreed (A), Disagreed (D), Strongly disagreed (SD).
The following structural questions can be asked:
possible Peer pressure questions to ask students
- My friends decide whatever thing I will do.
- I put on the kind of cloth my friends put on.
- I couldn’t prepare well for my exams because I hung out with my friends last night.
- I don’t do my homework by myself, I usually copy my classmate.
- I do have group discussion with my friends before examination.
- My friend thought me how to smoke.
- It is not a bad idea to take alcoholic drinks and beers.
- I prefer to play football with my friends than doing my homework.
- I do not seek clarification of what I was thought in class.
- I don’t study well since I have been going out with my friends.
- I love attending clubs with my friends.
- I engage in casual sex, if I have the chance.
- I prefer going to library with my friend to study.
- I can not comprehend my studies if I don’t smoke or take drugs first.
Possible time management questions to ask students
- I do not attend lecture regularly because I don’t have lecture timetable.
- I do miss class activities because I feel I can always cover up for the missing lectures.
- I don’t read until two weeks to examinations.
- I love working under pressure.
- I have a personal studying timetable.
- I sequentially follow my daily plans and schedules.
- Procrastination has become my habit.
- I plan to read ahead my classmates.
- I don’t see the essence of creating a personal timetable since I can always read my lecture notes randomly.
- I keep assignments to pile up before doing them.
- I don’t feel bothered about my studies when seeing a movie.
Oh I'm so sorry, I have to stop here, I will continue in the next episode of this post, where the detailed result of the research will be revailed.
Thanks for your time
References
- https://education.media/negative-effects-of-peer-pressure-in-high-school
- http://theteachersdigest.com/6-ways-in-which-children-are-negatively-affected-by-peer-pressure/
- https://scotscoop.com/peer-pressure-influences-students/
- http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.ijap.20160606.02.html
- http://work.chron.com/meaning-academic-performance-17332.html