CANONICAL CORRELATION ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS PSYCHO-SOCIAL VARIABLES AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN CROSS-CUTTING CORE SUBJECTS IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN DELTA STATE

Abstract

The academic achievement in cross-cutting core subjects- Mathematics and English Language among secondary school students in Delta state has been on the decline for the past five consecutive years. This study used canonical correlation analysis to analyze the relationship between psycho-social variables and academic achievement in cross-cutting core subjects, and factor analysis to investigate the variability among the subjects and to find out the variables that contribute significantly to the percentage of variance obtained. The study adopted a correlation research design. The population of the Study was 28,202 of SS2 students in the 356 public secondary schools in Delta State. A sample of 400 students was obtained for the study through multi-stage sampling technique. The psycho-social variables instruments for data collection include: self-efficacy, self-esteem, motivation, social network and test anxiety scales adopted. The reliability of the instruments was found to be .76, .88, .89 and .71 respectively using Cronbach Alpha. The academic achievement scores in the cross-cutting core subjects in secondary school (Mathematics and English Language) were obtained from the sampled schools in the study area. Three research questions and two hypotheses were formulated for the study. Wilk’s Lambda and Bartlett’s tests were obtained to respectively test the significance of canonical variate and the homogeneity of variance among the variables. The results indicated that there are fairly positive correlations among some variables as shown by the correlation matrix. It was further revealed that psycho-social variables have a significant impact on determining students’ academic achievement. Two canonical roots were obtained and one is statistically significant showing a strong correlation between the two sets. Based on the findings, some recommendations were made by the researchers.