Abstract:

Introduction: In every school system, academic performance is the main concern to students as well as the teachers. Several studies have shown that factors such as motivation and study time have impacted on students’ success (Cote & Levine, 2000, Singth, Granville & Dika, 2002).

Since grade is a principal factor of such learning, if a learner earns high grades it is thought that he/she has learned well while low grades indicate poor learning outcome. However, many have also found out that several factors contribute to the grades. No particular factor can be taken in isolation as predicting grades. It has been the control of so many factors such as gender, IQ, study habits, study time, age, year of study, level of parent’s educational attainment, social status, birth order, etc. In fact, almost all the environmental, personal and natural factors above exert influence on academic performance. The determinants of academic performance are a regular topic in public policy debates on higher education.

One largely disturbed issue concerns the impact of the most important factors in the educational production, student’s effort and study time on academic success. Many studies have been carried out on study time behavior and students’ accomplishment. The recent ones include that of Logunmakin (2001), Kumar (2002) and Gbore (2006). They all agreed that study time attitude affects strong relationship with academic performance of students while other researchers like Owolabi (1996) and Adeyemo (2005) concluded that students’ academic excellence was the outcome of a combination of the study time behaviour and other factors in any course of study. Adeyemo (2005) specifically opined that study time attitude is an exercise that goes beyond merely reading for pleasure.

Study time problems that have to do with student’s engagement in home work, assignments, reading and note taking, study period procedure, students’ concentration in examination and teachers’ consultancy services necessitated this study. This study seek to explores the extent, to which study time behaviour could solve the achievement lingering problems in academic performance of students in Texila American University.

Aims and objectives: The objective of the study is to determine the difference in the academic success of long study time behaviour of Texila American University students and their short study time counterparts.

Materials and methodology: A survey approach is adopted to determine students’ study time behaviour and their academic achievement of social studies students in the Texila American University. The study area for this research is Texila American University, Guyana campus. The campus hosts the Colleges of Medicine and Nursing. The population of the study will be made up of all students of MD 1 - MD 4 of Texila American University. A structured questionnaire called “Length of study-time behaviour and academic achievement of Texila American University students Inventory” will be used in collecting data for this study and personal interviews will also be conducted. The instrument will have a 4-point Likert rating of Agree (A), Strongly Agree (SA), Disagree (D) and Strongly Disagree (SD).

Keywords: study time; academic performance; educational attainment.

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