Academic Achievement of Female Students at College Level In Relation to Their Family Environment And Locale

Academic achievement is often considered as a key criterion to judge one's total potentialities and capabilities. Academic achievement has become a prime interest for the teachers, educationists, psychologists and parents to predict children's academic success which is considered to be an outcome of the learning environment and the family. The present study aimed at seeking the level of academic achievement of female students at the college level with respect to their family environment and locale. Random Sampling Technique was applied to draw the sample of 200 female students studying in the five-degree colleges of Jammu City (J&K) in the year 2015. Family Environment Scale (FES-BC) by Bhatia and Chadha (2012) was used for data collection. This tool has eight dimensions-Cohesion, Expressiveness, Conflict, Acceptance and Caring, Independence, Active-Recreational Orientation, Organisation and Control. The findings revealed that most of the female students were having an average level of academic achievement. Very few female students were found to have a high level of academic achievement. No significant differences in the level of academic achievement were found among female students in relation to their residential background, whereas significant differences were found in the family environment of female students with respect to the locality at the sub-scale “Acceptance and Caring” and “Active Recreational Orientation”. The value of the coefficient of correlation was found to be low, positive but significant at the 0.01 level of significance at the sub-scale “Cohesion” of Family Environment Scale. It shows that academic achievement and cohesion in the family are positively related with each other, however, the correlation is low.