SCHOOL OF PEDAGOGICAL AND BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY THE INFLUENCE OF PEER GROUPAND OTHER OSSOCIATED FACTORS ON STUDENTS ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT: THE CASE OF GENERAL SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN MIRAB ABAYA WOREDA.

Abstract

Peer groups play a vital role in the social, emotional and academic development of students. Understanding the prospects and challenges of peer group is crucial for the productivity of educational processes and the organizational design of school systems in order to improve students’ academic achievement. The main objective of this study was to investigate the influence of peer group and other associated factors on students’ academic achievement in Mirab Abaya woreda general secondary schools. The researcher used mixed research method with survey research design and the data was collected from a randomly selected 325 (145 male and 180 female) students” and purposely selected three principals and three vice principals from study area. Questionnaire and interview used to collect data. The data was analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics (correlation and multiple regressions) with the aid of SPSS version 25. The finding of the study revealed that, peer groups, parent, social and school related factors on standard model are significantly predict students academic achievement. In addition to that, there is statistically significant weak relationship between peer group, parent, school, and social related factors and academic achievement with sig. value 0.000 which is less than 0.05. The coefficient of determination of R-squared value for the regression model summary was 0.699. This value shows that 69.9% of the variance in the peer group, school, parent and social related factors predict students’ academic achievement. Based on the findings, it was recommend that students should be encouraged to choice their friend wisely as some have negative influence on their academic achievement, especially those who sneak out of school, use drugs and those who do not attend s intermolecularly.