The Effect of Time Management On The Academic Performance of Students in The Higher Educational Institutions of Islamabad
The Effect of Time Management On The Academic Performance of Students in The Higher Educational Institutions of Islamabad
The Effect of Time Management On The Academic Performance of Students in The Higher Educational Institutions of Islamabad
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AQSA ASHRAF
MPhil Scholar, at Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE).
Email: [email protected]
AAMIR NADEEM
Associate Professor, at City University of Science & Technology (CUST), Peshawar.
Email: [email protected]
Abstract
This study investigates the effect of students’ time management on their academic achievement in the
higher education institutions of Islamabad. For this purpose, we collected data from a representative
sample of students. We employ Pearsons’ correlation and regression analysis to investigate the influencing
factors of academic performance. Our results show that students’ self-study has significant and positive
association with their academic performance, which indicates that academic performance is increases with
the increase in self-study hours. On the contrary, disproportionate involvement in social life enjoyment
activities are detrimental to higher academic performance. Female students’ academic achievement is
higher than that of male students. Perhaps, female students are good time managers and spend more time
on self-study. For policy purpose, seminars should be arranged to educate students on how best to allocate
their time being enrolled for a full-time study.
Introduction
Managing time being a student is as important as later in life. It is essential for students to manage their
time in daily activities (Abban, 2011). Most students run out of time when an assignment is assigned to
them and they are not able to finish it before the last date while others have plenty of time as they are
trained to manage their time effectively. Efficient time management 1 always results in contentment and
satisfaction in daily life (Mercanlioglu, 2008).
Time management is important in the sense that it teaches people how to manage their lives and time
effectively. Aduke (2015) argues that time management is a skill of organizing, planning, arranging and
accounting one‟s time for creating more productivity and efficient work. It depends on priorities how one‟s
1
Time management is a process of determining objectives, prioritizing and planning to achieve these
objectives. Claessens et al. (2007) defines time management as “behaviors that aim at achieving an
effective use of time while performing certain goal directed activities”.
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allocate and distribute the time between competing demands as we cannot store time for future and it can
never be increase or decrease from 24 hours. Besides, Chaturvedi (2016) argues that time allocation;
especially for university students is quite essential as it help to enhance their productivity and grades.
Generally, students lack good management skills to organize tasks according to their importance, as a result
they are unfocussed, uncertain and task averse. Time allocation includes setting goals as Druker (1994)
argues that we must know where we spent our time. We need to prioritize our most important projects so
that we are able to complete these projects according to their importance. From the perspective of students,
effective time management skills lead to higher academic performance 2.
Furthermore, Aduke (2015) argued that prioritizing tasks can make work and studying more pleasant which
reduces inefficiencies, anxiety and stress. Nonis et.al (1998) states that good time management skills reduce
worry and stress of students which enhances their productivity and grades. So, learning the art of time
management is a necessity. Some people are good time managers but not everyone. We all have to assure
good time management skills to be successful not only in student life but as well later in life. According to
Claessens et al. (2005) time management is possible thorough performance, ability 3 and self-motivation4.
Studies show that academic achievement is influenced by time management. Sevari and Kandy (2011)
argue that in spite of knowing the influence of time management on academic achievement, students do not
give due importance to this relationship. Grades are mostly determined by the completion of tasks such as
assignments and the quality of effort used to complete it. Khanam et al. (2017) states that academic
achievement is the outcome of education and it is generally measured by periodic assessment or
examinations but there is no common agreement on how it is best tested or which aspects are more
important. Owing to the importance of time management this study deals with investigating the relationship
of student‟s time management and academic achievement in the higher educational institutes of Islamabad.
The paper is organized as follows; section 2 reviews the relevant literature. Data and methodology are
presented in section 3. Section 4 discusses the main findings of the study. Whereas the final section
concludes.
Review of Literature
This section reviews literature on the effect of students‟ time management on their academic performance.
Numerous studies have examined the factors affecting students‟ academic performance. Considering these
theoretical and empirical work few studies focusses on time management and students‟ academic
performance from the perspective of higher institutes in Pakistan. Most of the reviewed studies (below)
found that time planning and self-study are the main factors of achieving higher grades. Besides, lecture
attendance does get prime place in this discussion. But neither of these studies control for the influence of
students‟ ability, social life enjoyment and subject interest on academic performance. This study
specifically fills this gap by focusing on the interviewing the students in the higher education institutions of
Islamabad.
Grave (2011) conducted that students‟ time allocation have positive effect on undergraduate student‟s
grades. Spending sufficient time in studying and working as teacher assistant or tutor have positive effect
on their grades. Serving as a teacher assistant and attending all classes needs high level of motivation
2
Kpolovie et.al (2014) defines academic achievement as an outcome of education. Academic achievement
is measured through examinations, such as knowledge which students have learnt in any formal institute.
In this study academic achievement refer to the (CGPA) grades of the students.
3
Scheffler (1985) also defines ability as a kind of potential or performance. In this study researcher used
the student ability as student potential for performance.
4
Gottfried et al. (2001) defines motivation is the willingness and contribution of the student to learn and
obtain high academic achievement Motivation may be intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation. In this
study extrinsic motivation is used. Extrinsic motivation refers to behavior that is driven by external
rewards such as money, fame, grades, and praise.
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achieved through the role of time allocation. Besides, Ogundipe & Falade (2014) investigated the influence
of student‟s time allocation and academic achievement while focusing on time consumed on self-study,
course attendance, seminars attendance and involvement in group study. Their findings reveal that
attending courses, seminars and self-study are positively associated with academic performance.
Miqdadi et al. (2014) investigated the relationship between time management and academic performance of
students by considering procrastination, workload pressure, distraction and disorganization as important
factors. The study found successful students are good time managers. George et al. (2008) find that among
these factors, time management is the most influential factor of academic achievement and significantly
correlated with success. Ali et al. (2013) also determined the factors affecting academic performance of
students. Students grade is used as dependent variable whereas age, gender, schooling, faculty, tuition
trend, daily study hours, parents socio-economic background, medium of schooling, residential area and
accommodation trend are used as independent variables. The study found that daily study hours and socio-
economic status have significant relationship with academic performance. Khanam et al. (2017) analyzed
the effect of students‟ time management on their academic achievement. They focus on students short run
and long run planning. The study concluded that students with effective time management achieve high
grades and those who do not manage their time effectively achieve low grades. Only one third of the
students set their plans and works according to their priorities while majority of the students do not plan
and always spend their time without planning. Nasrullah and Khan (2015) analyze how effectively students
allocate their time for successfully achieving academic standards. Their findings show positive and
significant relationship between time management and students‟ success. Zulauf & Gortner (2000)
conducted a time diary survey at Ohio State University and a designed questionnaire was used to measure
individual time management behavior. They concluded that time management behavior has positive
relationship with GPA. Rai (2016) found that the ratio of students who finishes their task on time is very
low and these students perform very well than those who do not manage their work. Similar findings are
reported by Oyuga (2016) orphaned students of secondary schools in Kenya.
Khatib (2014) examined the relationship between time management and perceived stress. The findings of
the study showed negative relationship between time management and perceived stress. Female students
reported higher time management than male students. Pehlivan (2013) also determined the influence of
time management skills on student‟s grades. The study shows that the students of Karadeniz technical
institute have moderate level of time management. With respect to gender variable, females are good time
managers, and they have high grades than male students. Bratti and Staffolani (2013) found the impact of
lecture attendance and self-study on the academic achievement of undergraduate students. Their results
show that only lecture attendance is positively significant with performance of quantitative courses such as
mathematics and economics and it becomes insignificant for most other courses. Similar findings are
reported by Cyril (2014) and Plant et al. (2005) for Florida State University.
Data
In order to address the research objective, we used primary data on important variables like; time
management, academic achievement and other important influencing factors such as academic motivation,
student ability etc. We collected our data through structured questionnaire from the target population of
M.Phil. economics students at International Islamic University, Quaid-e-Azam University and Pakistan
Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad. The target population was 196 students, in which 80 were
students of Quaid-e-Azam University, 86 from International Islamic university and 30 were from Pakistan
Institute of Development Economics.
The sample5 consisted of 196 students at these universities. However, only 171 questionnaires were
correctly filled and returned. So, the final sample size of this study remains 171.
Theoretical Framework
The Production Function Approach (PFA) is commonly used to examine the productivity relationship
between students‟ scores and factors which influence students‟ score (Gordon, (2007); Tangaraju et al.
(2013); Nahar & Arshad (2014)). We used the PFA to check the influence of time management on the
academic achievement of students. Students‟ academic achievement is the output and time management,
students‟ ability, academic motivation and students‟ socioeconomic background are the inputs. An
expanded educational production function is used as stated below,
Here AACH is the educational achievement, TMG stands for time management, ABI stands for students‟
ability, MOT represent student‟s motivation and SECB stands for the socio-economic background of the
student. We used Multiple Linear Regression approach to estimate the above production function.
Specifically, the multiple linear regression equation is given as;
In equation (1),
AACH is the dependent variable representing the academic performance of students taken as grades
(CGPA) of the students. AG is the age of the student in years. GEN is the gender of the student, male takes
value 1, otherwise zero. MSTS represents marital status of the student, if person is married take value 1,
otherwise zero. NOCH represents the number of children this person has. DPLN represents day planning, if
the person plans his/her day take value 1, otherwise zero. SLST represents self-study, which measure that
how much hour‟s students spent on self-study per week. SWGR represents students‟ work group,
measuring how many hours students spent on study in a group per week. JHOL represents job holder,
which measure whether the student is doing a job, if job holder take value 1, otherwise zero.
MEDU and FEDU represents mother and father education, which measure their educational background in
number of years. SINT represents subject interest that measure whether the main reason of going to
University is the student special interest in the subject. If the person is interested in the subject, takes value
one otherwise zero. SLENJ represents social life enjoyment that measure whether student is going to
university to enjoy the social life only. If the student is going to university because he/she can enjoy social
life take vale 1, otherwise zero. GMAR represents the Gat marks of the students, which measure the student
ability we have taken this indicator as student ability in this study. PIDEST is the institutional dummy,
which takes value 1 if the student is from PIDE, otherwise zero. IIUIST is the institutional dummy for the
students at International Islamic University, if the student from IIUI takes value 1, otherwise zero.
5
When population is finite the whole population is considered as sample.
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Descriptive Statistics
Table 1 presents the demographic characteristics of the respondents. Being university students, their
average age is 22.1 years. Average monthly income of the respondent‟s family is Rs. 97701. About 54
percent of the respondents are male. Nearly, 98 percent of the students are unmarried. About 44.4 percent
of the students are from the IIU followed by QAU (39.8 percent). The remaining students are from PIDE
(15.4 percent in total).
Nearly, 11.1 percent of the students are jobholders. Most of them are working evening shifts in different
organizations. Nearly, 55 percent of these students have „A‟ grades in their last degree. Whereas 38.6
percent students have „B‟ grades. Majority of the respondent‟s father have government job (47.4 percent),
followed by own a business (28.6 percent). Whereas most of the mothers are housewives (86 percent).
Table 3 indicating the language of the respondents‟ that majority of the respondents (36.3 percent) speaks
Urdu, followed by Pashto (33.3 percent). About (17.0 percent) speaks Punjabi. Whereas the proportion of
Balti and Sindhi languages are 5.3 and 4.1 percent, respectively. The lowest percentage is of Kashmiri
language (1.8 percent).
Balti 9 5.3
Kashmiri 3 1.8
Total 171 100.0
Source: Based on field survey
MIN= minimum AVG= average MAX= maximum OSRA = Other Study Related Activities
Table 3 shows the grades of the students, which he/she obtained in their previous degree by institution.
Nearly, 76.5 percent of the QAU students have „A‟ grades in their last degree, followed by PIDE (55.6
percent). The lowest proportion is of IIU (35.5 percent).
Table 4 shows that QAU students spend more time on self-study, followed by PIDE. Whereas study in
group is more common in PIDE followed by IIU. Other study related activities e.g. participation seminars
and conferences are more common in PIDE as compared to QAU and IIU. QAU students are higher
achievers in terms of GAT marks, followed by PIDE. Furthermore, students of QAU have higher CGPA,
followed by PIDE.
Pearson Correlation
We also estimated Pearson correlation to check the correlation between academic performance and other
variables of interest. Table 5 shows that there is positive and significant relationship between self-study and
students‟ academic achievement, which indicates that self-study enable students to get higher academic
performance. The relationship of day planning with academic performance is positive, but other study
related activities has negative influence on academic performance. This shows that spending time on other
activities, lower academic score. Furthermore, the effect of social life enjoyment on academic performance
(CGPA) is negative and significant. Which means that involvement in social activities being a full-time
student is detrimental for academic performance. The effect of students‟ ability is positive but insignificant
in our case.
In the above table of correlation family income is positively correlated with academic performance. Father
education and mother education also have positive correlation with academic performance. Family income
is significantly correlated with mother and father education the reason behind is that if both are educated
and they may be doing jobs and they will efficiently manage the family income.
Empirical Results
We estimated equation (1), through OLS while including the influencing factors of student‟s performance
(see Table 6). The students‟ academic performance (CGPA) is the dependent variable which is explained
by a number of independent variables. The results show that the effect of age on CGPA is positive and
significant, which indicates that CGPA is increases in the age of the students. The study also found that
CGPA is negatively and significantly associated with gender, which indicates that female students have
higher CGPA as compared to male students. These results are similar to previous studies. Hadii and
Fagroud (2018) observed that, nowadays, female students get higher grades than male students in nearly all
disciplines. Sheard (2009) also found that female significantly outperformed their counterparts in academic
achievement. Marital status is negatively associated with CGPA, which means if a person is married there
are less chances for him to get higher CGPA. Married person is more busy, due to the responsibilities of
home activities. However, its estimated effect is statistically insignificant in our case. The estimated
coefficient of variable number of children is negative but insignificantly associated with CGPA. The effect
of day planning is positive but insignificant. Self-study is positive and significantly associated with CGPA,
which indicates that academic performance is increases with the increase in self-study hours. These results
conform to the studies by Zulauf and Gortnet (2000) and Mercanoilglu (2010) who found that students‟
grades are increases in self-study.
Students‟ work in groups is negatively associated with CGPA, which, indicates that if a student spent time
in group work, he has less chances of getting higher CGPA. Job is positive but insignificant associated with
GGPA. The effect of parental education is insignificant in our case, as parental education may not matter
for increase in students‟ grades at higher level education (being enrolled for M.Phil. degree). The estimated
effect of subject interest is negative and insignificant. Koller et.al (2001) states that subject interest has
bidirectional relationship with academic achievement which might help increase motivation that leads to
academic success.
The effect of social life enjoyment on the academic performance of students is negative and significant,
which means that students‟ excessive involvement in social life enjoyment activities adversely affecting
their grades. Umar et.al (2010) found excessive involvement of students in social enjoyment activities has
negative effect on their academic performance. But contrary to our results, Haider et.al (2015) found
positive and significant relationship between social life enjoyment and academic performance.
Our results also show that GAT marks have positive and significant relationship with CGPA. Variable “
GAT marks” is used to measure the students‟ ability. Our results conform to that of Chemers et al. (2001)
that academic ability is significantly and directly related to academic performance. The estimated effect of
the institutional dummy for PIDE students positive and statistically significant but the same is not true in
case of IIU.
Furthermore, excessive involvement in social life enjoyment activities are detrimental for higher academic
performance as variable social life enjoyment is negatively and significantly associated with academic
performance (CGPA).
Parents and teachers should monitor and encourage students to avoid participation in social enjoyment
activities and focus on necessitating for more involvement in self-study through indulging them in more
assignments and tests on weekly basis. Seminars should be arranged to educate the students on how best to
allocate their time being enrolled for a full-time study.
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