Influence of Socio-economic Status of Parents on Students’ Academic Performance in Chemistry

Abstract

This paper investigated the influence of socio- economic status of parents on students’ academic performance in Chemistry. Descriptive analysis survey design was adopted for the study. The sample consists of 227 students of levels 200 – 400 (session 2016/2017) in Chemistry department of Ignatius Ajuru University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. As of then the population was 404 students. The sampling technique was simple random sampling. Four research questions were answered and four null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significant. The instrument used for data collection was questionnaire on socio- economic status of parents and academic performance in Chemistry (SESPAPC) covering – parents’ income, educational status, occupation and type of residence. The instrument was validated and subjected to KAPPA (k)) to determine the co-efficient which was found to be 0.72. The data collected was analyzed using mean and standard deviation for the research questions and the hypotheses were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The study revealed significant influence of parents’ income, education levels, and occupation on students’ academic performance but no significant influence of parents’ kind of residence on students’ academic performance was found. Based on these findings, recommendations were made amongst which was that Government should help to improve the standard of living for her citizens. Chemistry teachers should adopt teaching-learning styles that will not discriminate but rather provide equal changes for their students from all socio- economic background to fully participate in the learning.