Effects of Personality Traits on Students’ Academic Performance in Business Studies in Public Junior Secondary Schools in Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study examined effects of personality traits on students’ academic performance in Business Studies in Public junior Secondary Schools in Rivers State, two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study, the study employed quasi-experimental design. Specifically, the study adopted pretest-posttest non- randomized control group design. The target population of the study was 1,500 students of business studies in all Junior Secondary School II (JSS 2) in public secondary schools in Emohua Local Government Area of Rivers state. Purposive sampling technique was used to select six (6) public secondary schools. Simple random sampling techniques was used to select 20 JSS 2 students in each of the selected schools, making it a total number of one hundred and twenty (120) students in public secondary schools in Emohua Local Government Area of Rivers state. A self-structured questionnaire titled: Students Personality Trait Questionnaire (SPTQ) and Student Business Achiement Test (SBAT) were used for data collection. The instrument were validated by two expert’s judgment in measurement and evaluation in the department of educational foundations in Rivers State University. The reliability of the instruments was established using test- retest and a reliability coefficient of 0.78 was obtained. Mean and standard deviation were used in answering the research questions. Systematic sampling technique was used to select 10 students who scored within 0 – 59 (introverts) and 10 students’ who scored 60 and above (extroverts), while t-test statistics was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study in research question one revealed that Business Education Students given pretest did not perform better as of when posttest was administered to them, whereas research question two shows that Business Education students given posttest perform better as of when posttest was administered to them. Based on the findings it was recommended that business subject teachers should as a matter of importance not rely on pretest scores in judging students with extroversion traits because the students’ were not taught before administering the test to them.