Factors Affecting Students’ Performance

Running head: STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE 1
Factors Affecting Students’ Performance
Name:
Institution:

STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE 2
Introduction
Students’ performance is quite important when determining the pathway to their success.
Therefore, educators should be in a position to determine whether the student performance is at
its best. This research is determined to analyze the students’ performance. In particular, different
factors such as engagement of part-time work, courses/major being taken, gender affects the
performance of the students. By the end of this research, factors significantly affect the
performance of the students will be obtained.
To select a representative sample of size n = 25, simple random sampling was used. The excel
was used to generate 25 random values using the command =RANDBETWEEN() which gave
the first piece of data. The same sampling approach was repeated and the second piece of data
was obtained. Then the data were combined to have a total sample of n = 50. This was an
adequate sample to make inference about the student population (Keller, 2014).
Scholars such as Hijazi & Naqvi (2006) investigated factors affecting students’ performance in
college. Among the factors investigated attitude towards class attendance, time allocated for
studies, among others. These scholars found that time set aside to study was not a significant
predictor on students’ performance. However, Hijazi & Naqvi (2006) associated performance to
the lurking variables, which were not considered in the research. These factors included
intelligence level, intellect, memory or method of learning among others.
Methodology of analysis
Based on the research objective, we would develop hypotheses which would be tested at the
level .05. First, descriptive statistics will be carried out to show how the data are distributed and
indicate their measures of central tendency and dispersion (Keller, 2014). In addition, the 95%

STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE 3
confidence interval will be constructed to show the range at which the population parameters are
expected to lie between. Also, hypothesis for the difference of the means between groups will be
tested. Most importantly, effects of different factors on students’ performance will be
investigated. The results section will be subdivided into two sections, where the first one will
contain descriptive statistics and the second inferential statistics.
Results
Descriptive statistics
First, we check demographic variables and how the data are distributed. We start with the
distribution of students on their major and gender.
Table 1: distribution of major and gender
Row Labels Count of Major Row Labels
Count
of
Gender
Accounting 66.00% F 36.00%
Business 34.00% M 64.00%
Grand Total 100.00% Grand Total 100.00%
The summary shows that 66% of the students are taking accounting and 34% are taking business
major. On the other hand, 36% of the students are female and 64.00% of the students are male
(Ott & Longnecker, 2015). Based, on this a conditional probability distribution of gender given
major was constructed.
Table 2: conditional distribution of gender by major
Count of
Gender Column Labels
Row Labels Accounting Business
Grand
Total
F 39.39% 29.41% 36.00%
M 60.61% 70.59% 64.00%
Grand Total 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%
The summary indicates that 39.39% of the students were female given they were taking
accounting (Wickens, 2014). Further, 29.41% of the students were female given they were taking

STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE 4
business major. For the male, the percentage was 60.61% and 70.59% given they were taking
accounting and business respectively. The overall distribution of gender by major is illustrated
below.
Table 3: distribution of gender by major
Count of
Gender Column Labels
Row Labels Accounting Business
Grand
Total
F 26.00% 10.00% 36.00%
M 40.00% 24.00% 64.00%
Grand Total 66.00% 34.00% 100.00%
The summary shows that most of the females are enrolled in accounting and so are the males.
This means that if a student is randomly selected, there is a higher chance that she/he comes from
an accounting major.
A similar assessment was carried out, but now on the grade and major. The summary is as
follows.
Table 4: distribution of grade by major
Count of
Grade Column Labels
Row Labels Accounting Business
Grand
Total
CR 15.15% 11.76% 14.00%
D 18.18% 23.53% 20.00%
HD 21.21% 11.76% 18.00%
N 15.15% 41.18% 24.00%
PA 30.30% 11.76% 24.00%
Grand Total 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%