Abstract:
Several authorities and researchers have carried out studies around academic performance of students. The reviewed works showed that academic performance of students have been an issue of concern to all stakeholders in the field of education. It was noted from the reviewed works that there are several interacting factors to academic performance which study habit is one of them. The purpose of the study was to assess the relationship between study habit and the academic performance of University students in the Department of Nursing Sciences in the South East, Nigeria. Five objectives were set for the study which were to assess the relationship between study materials used by the students, planning of the study of students, assimilation of content of study, study environment and demographic statues of the respondents in relationship to their study habit and academic performance. Also six hypotheses were set for the study. Related literatures were reviewed and relevant theory to the study applied. Co-relational design was adopted for the study The target population of the study was 1784 students from Departments of Nursing Sciences in five Government owned Universities in South East Nigeria and sample size of 348 respondents was determined using power analysis. Stratified simple random technique was used to select sample size from each university. Self structured questionnaire with reliability of 0.76 and students’ result were instruments used for data collection. Data derived from the study were subjected to simple descriptive statistics. Hypotheses were tested with Pearson’s Spearman Correlation at 0.05 level of significance. Findings show that there is generally poor study habit (60.4%), and fairly moderate academic performance (37.4%). Also there is poor use of study materials (mean=1.93), poor assimilation of content of study (mean=1.81) and poor study environment with mean of 1.91. The study also revealed that there is significant relationship between study materials used by the students (p = 0.572), study environment (p = 0.250) and planning of study (p = 0.274) of the respondents with their academic performance p <0.05. The result also showed that there is no significant relationship between assimilation of content of study of students, gender and level of study of respondents with academic performance p > 0.05. Based on the findings, it was recommended that training of students on study habit should be reinforced and also included as a course in curriculum of students in our institutions of higher learning for better academic performance.
