A Study of Academic Achievement and Attitudes Towards the Studying of Second-Year Undergraduate Students in Political Parties, Interest Groups and Elections Course.

Abstract

A Study of Academic Achievement and Attitudes Towards the studying of Second-Year Undergraduate Students in Political Parties, Interest Groups and Elections Course is aimed 1) to comparatively study in the before and after periods concerning academic achievement and attitudes towards the studying of Second-Year undergraduate students in Political parties, Interest Groups and Elections course, 2) to compare the students’ attitudes towards the studying of Political Parties, Interest Groups and Elections Course in the before and after periods. The research sample consists of one class of 31 second-year undergraduate students studied in the second semester in 2017 academic year in the Faculty of Political Science (Governance) in which the sample was selected by purposive sampling technique. The research instruments are1) 30 items of four-multiple choice academic achievement test. The test difficulty value (p) is from 0.513 to 0.771. The test discrimination values (r) is from 0.403 to 0.665. The reliability value using Conbach’s Alpha Coefficient shows the reliability value at 0.93 and 2) 25 items Attitude Measurement test with 5 Likert scales in which its discrimination level is from 0.62 to 0.84. The reliability value using Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient shows the reliability value at 0.96. The statistic used for the data analysis are namely, Mean, Standard Deviation, and paired T-Test is used for hypothesis prove.

           The findings reveal that

           1) The second-year undergraduate students who studied in Political Parties, Interest Groups and Elections Course show higher academic achievement mean scores in the after period than the before period which is significantly different at 0.1 level.

           2) The second-year undergraduate students who studied in Political Parties, Interest Groups and Elections Course show higher attitude mean scores in the after period than the before period which is significantly different at 0.1 level.

          In conclusion, the learning activity management in ‘Political Parties, Interest Groups and Elections Course’ for the second-year undergraduate students shows a higher level score of academic achievement and attitude.  Hence, the course lecturers should be supported in applying in the course management for the learners’ achievement as stated in the course objectives.