Peer group influence on the academic performance of undergraduate students of Makerere University

Abstract

Little has been known about the influence of peer groups on the academic performance of students in higher institutions. Therefore, this study assessed the influence of peer groups on the academic performance among students at Makerere university. A sample of 100 third year students from the five courses at School of Statistics and Planning were interviewed using a well pretested questionnaire programmed in the Kobo-Collect App installed on smart phone. Responses or data collected was exported from Kobo-Collect server to STAT version 15 for data processing that involved cleaning and sorting and later analysis that was done at both univariate and bivariate levels. On average the respondents were aged 23 years. Sixty percent of the respondents were males and most (75%) of them were residing in hostels and university halls. On the aspect of academic performance, 74% of the respondents at least had second class degrees. Nearly over half (54%) the respondents spent most of their time with peers with most (62.96%) of them having single sex groups. On average the groups composed of 4 members with most (74.08%) of them having met at least one-year back at campus and the friend were always reading, jazzing and parting/going out together. For those that did spent most of their time with friends like being alone and some did not like being influenced by the peers. It was revealed that 30% of the respondents were negatively influenced by peer groups with regard to academics and only 12% were positively influenced though 58% were not influenced in one or another. At bivariate analysis, chi-square results showed that peer group influence significantly affected student`s academic performance where over (77%) of the respondents that were positively influence by peer groups with regard to academics had at least a second class upper degree (CGPA=3.60 to 5.00) as compared to only 13% of the respondents that were negatively influence by peer groups with regard to academics had a second class upper degree (CGPA=3.60 to 5.00) The researcher therefore, recommends that university students should be conscious of the groups there are associated to since different peer groups significantly influences their academic performance in one way or another. She further recommends further study on the influence of peer groups on students` life style during the course of study at university