Title: Determinants of good academic performance among university students in Ethiopia: a

cross-sectional study
Authors: Mesfin Tadese, Alex Yeshaneh & Getaneh Baye Mulu
Year: 2022

I. Introduction (discussing problem of the study, objectives)

Universities have a crucial role in the development of human resources capable of addressing
actual societal challenges. Education can be a strong lever that enhances health and living
standards and is linked with social well-being and social order. Of the two, at the micro-level
it is linked with improved life chances of individuals occasioned by enhanced productivity as
those with better education are endowed with better economic and social opportunities. At
macro level, education establishes skilled human asset that was regarded as the fundamental
tangible factor of economic development. But getting Educated in terms of knowledge,
attitudes, values and skills does not come by easily as people might think it to be a process
that can take a long time and is quite challenging. The students have a lot of time for learning
and should be qualified by achieving good results in their education. Performance or
accomplishment in academics is the extent to which, in terms of short-term or long-term
goals, a student, a teacher or an institution has realized academic goals and which may be
assessed continuously or by CGPA. This research based on correlational study on the sample
of vocational high school students in Indonesia discovered that the students with good
academic performances earn relatively high incomes, better employment opportunities, and
improved employment privileges. Further, the academically successful students show higher
self-esteem and self-confidence, lower anxiety and depression scores, social sensitivity, and
offer less tendency to substance use, such as alcohol and khat. But a cross-sectional study
conducted in Malaysia in higher learning institutions pointed out that, in fact, more and more
students continue not graduating on time, which an indication that they did not excel in their
academics.
Unfortunately, the awareness and the efforts of the government towards provision of
educational facilities go still unrewarded with majority of students not posting good results at
all levels of their learning. Correlational research conducted at the Arba Minch University,
South Ethiopia, found out that the graduating aluno does not correspond to the enrolment
aluno rate and more students are repeating thru readmission on account of their poor
performances. This has lead to unemployment, poverty, drug/ alcohol addition, high
incidence of premarital/extra marital engagements, being chased away from their homes, pen
theft, withdrawal from the society, inadequate health insurance and Esperanto. Also, a
systematic review conducted in India and concluded that the poor academic performance
results in stress to the parents and the students end up developing a poor self-esteem. It is also
positively and highly correlated to high scores of anxiety amongst university students in
Pakistan. further, the academic failure in the public schools in Pakistan impacts their self-
concept and makes them feel disturbance and shock that leaves them to drop out from the
overall schools systems.
 Apart from the quality of schools various individual and household characteristics such as
SES, ELP, class attendance, employment, high school GPAs, and academic self-beliefs have
been recommended to determine academic performance. Other variables like teaching ability,
number of hours spent on studies, number of children in a family, and parents’ participation
with their children also relate to performance. The acceptability of unsafe behaviour survey
which was a cross-sectional study of university students in Australia found that aging does
not result in poor performance. The quantitative secondary data collected from fifth-grade
students in Colorado proved that eating breakfast, having normal body mass index, getting
proper sleep, and exercising for at least 5 days a week enhanced the students’ cumulative
grades. There was also a highly significant relationship between entering the medical field
and quality performance in school in Pakistan. Thus, at Arba Minch University, students’
general academic performance before joining the university predicted success in higher
education programs. Conducted a descriptive study among Bahir Dar university students, the
study revealed that parents’ education status and night club attendance affect the performance
of the students. Further, survey studies concerning Nigerian high school students revealed
one determinant where the students whose parents are government employees had better
performance. However, the effects of these factors are not homogeneous in relation to the
analyzed regions, and the results are differentiated by rural and urban settlements, which may
be due to the differences in the methods of measuring and data quality, or the specifics of
each work conducted.
Substance use is one of the most important factors that act as hindrance to the achievement of
academic goals. Research done in the United States comparing a cross-sectional sample of
high school seniors who used substances with non-users indicated that the former was more
likely to skip school and get low grades. Likewise, a descriptive survey among students in
primary school in Jordan retrospectively discovered that smoking has impacts on the growth
of the child’s body and mind as well as low academic performance among them. This implied
that smoking acted as a pull factor in the learning context as students could not learn
effectively in those conditions. Perceived norms among University students in Wolaita Sodo
revealed that substance use (smoking, khat chewing, drinking alcohol, and intimate friend
who uses substance) had significant negative correlation with the students’ academic
performance. Jordanian students, smokers found in the primary schools, negatively affected
their ability to learn as it hindered the cognitive development and reduced attentiveness
coupled with a reduced memory power which could compromise information retention and
verbal learning.
In the previous studies, the majority of the research related to computer literacy is densely
concentrated in primary and secondary education levels while the problem is not well
addressed at the university level. The negative results in university student operations pose
need for focus. Furthermore, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, little literature exists
regarding this topic in Ethiopia, and what is available is confounded by various factors.
Therefore, this study aims to determine the factors that lead to the academic achievement of
university students in Southern Ethiopia.

II. Methodology
The cross-sectional study was undertaken at the Hawassa University in December 2020 with
the overall purpose to assess academic performance among 21, 579 students enrolled in the
university. The study assumed an amplifier of 0. 05%, which when cross multiplied by two
resulted in a sample size of 659 through the Open Epi software. The data were collected by
using structured questionnaires adopted into Amharic language; the validation was done
through back translation with high quality standard. Data analysis entailed Descriptive
statistics, Chi-Square tests and logistic regression presenting Odds Ratio in assessing
academic success and its predictors while the following variables were considered significant
predictors of an outcome meeting Chi-Square test of significance of the study at p-value <0.
05. Despite of that established study strengths, research limitation, like recall bias and
inability to determine causations because of cross sectional study design implies the need to
replicate studies with longitudinal research to provide efficient temporal relationships.

Results and Discussion

Category Description Percentage (n) Statistical

Significance
Baseline Age range (years) Mean: 21.62 (Poor) p-value not
Characteristics 21.73 (Good) specified
Residence 39% (Poor), 69.3% p = 0.035
(Good)
Field of study 38.9% (Non- p < 0.001
medical/health, Poor)
82.9%
(Medical/health,
Good)
Family and Experience of weight 34% (Poor), 66% p-value not
Psychosocial loss (Good) specified
Characteristics
Family occupation 38.7% (Poor), 69.7% p-value not
(Agriculturalist) (Good) specified
Behavioral Regular physical 67% (Good) p-value not
Characteristics activity specified
Smoking 58.8% (Poor, p = 0.028
Smokers)
Night club attendance 35% (Poor) p-value not
specified
Personal Study hours per day >4 hours: 69.3% p-value not
Characteristics (Good) specified
 Sleep duration per >7 hours: 68.4% p-value not
night (Good) specified
English proficiency Advanced: 80.6% p = 0.002
(Good)
Academic Performance Overall good 66%
performance
Mean CGPA 2.92 (SD ± 0.48)
CGPA comparison Poor: 2.39, Good:
(Poor vs. Good) 3.20
Determinants of Age 20-24 years: AOR = p-value not
Academic Performance 0.43 specified
Faculty Medical/health: AOR p-value not
= 2.46 specified
Smoking Non-smokers: AOR p-value not
= 3.15 specified

The study also sought to establish the factors that affect students’ performance in their studies
and it was found that overall 7 out of every 10-student got good grades in their studies in
Hawassa University. A cut off point was obtained for age, faculty type, and cigarette smoking
with academic performance. Non-smoking students had better academic performance than
smoking student, which corroborated the other global studies which revealed the negative
impacts of smoking on education and health. Test also had its peculiarities, specifically the
scores of 20-24 years old students were not as high as those of the 25-29 years old students,
where the increase in the age ratio contributed to the outcome. It can be highlighted that the
students of medical and health sciences appeared to perform better academically compared to
the students of other fields, which corresponds to the international researches focusing on the
high academic standards and the intrinsic motivation in the medical field. That aside,
limitations include possible endogeneity biases from self-Administered data and the
sectionality of the study that cannot explain cause effects relationships thus needing more
longitudinal study to corroborate these findings as well as to examine effects of other
institutional factors on academic results.

Further Improvement of the study

The relevance and utility of research on determinants of academic performance among
university students in Southern Ethiopia can be boosted by enhancing the improvement of the
study. Also, increasing the number of variables taken into consideration might give a wider
view on the subject. Thus, the present study’s variables include age, faculty type, and
smoking; nevertheless, the inclusion of socio-economic status (SES), parental education, and
motivation and self-efficacy may enhance the understanding of the phenomenon. Some of
these variables have been established in prior research as determinants of performance and
maybe provide more understanding concerning the prevalence in Ethiopia.
Second, it is necessary to overcome methodological limitations using more refined methods
of research. The cross-sectional survey design made the study unable to determine causal
changes within patients’ conditions as a result of the intervention. This might help to
distinguish which comes first in various issues such as smoking before poor performance in
class, … and therefore present a clearer picture of reliable data for the implementation of the
strategies. Moreover, though recall bias would still be an issue in longitudinal studies, it
would not be as influential and the changes in the variables would be easier to pinpoint on
academic results.
Thirdly, therefore, there is an opportunity for combining qualitative techniques with
quantitative approaches to give a balanced picture of the causes in the model. The
incorporation of qualitative data could elicit students’ perceptions, and or experiences, and
episodes of performance, as well as possible barriers and facilitators to their performance in
their own voices; hence provide rich variables on the socio-cultural and contextual
antecedents of poor academic performance. Some quantitative or mixed research methods
like focus groups or interviews could expand on students’ coping strategies, their perception
of the academic challenges, the impact of the outside pressure on their academic performance
and enrich the study results with qualitative data.
Lastly, improvement of the generalization of results other than Hawassa University to other
Universities across Ethiopia is important. Various geographical locations and different type
of universities like public and private domain can also be included in the research to compare
the factors that lead to better learning environment. The above comparative approach would
enable the policymakers, educator, and other relevant parties to foster suitable large-scale
intervention as well as support mechanism to cater appropriate intervention that is sensitive to
the regional variation and specific institutional requirements.
Consequently, future directions of this study may involve an expansion of variables, use of
longitudinal approach, combination of qualitative research techniques, and improved
generalizability so that the added dynamics of the subject under review might be explored in
much detail among Ethiopian university students. First, these enhancements augment the
amount and quality of knowledge that is available regarding beneficial educational
interventions, while, second, aiding the discussion about how to increase educational
outcomes and students’ success in college contexts.