The role of extracurricular academic performance and social skills to high school students

Subject Areas : Journal of Educational Psychology

Abbas Gholtash ¹ (Assistant Professor. Islamic Azad University . Abadeh Branch. Department of Educational Sciences; Abadeh, Iran)
Ahmadreza OjiNejad ² (Assistant Professor. Islamic Azad University . Marvdasht Branch. Department of Educational Sciences; Marvdasht, Iran)
Tahereh Gandomkar ³ (M.A Degree Curriculum Field. IAU Marvdasht Branch.)

Received: 2012-05-01 Accepted : 2012-08-15 Published : 2012-11-21

Keywords: social skills, educational performance, extra-curricular studying,

Abstract :

                The present study aims to investigate the role of extra-curricular studying on the educational performance and social skills of high school students. The study design was descriptive and to be more specific, causal-comparative. The population of this study was 814 students from Baladeh city in 2012-2013 school year.  200 students were selected from this population through random sampling with gender as a variable for selection. To assess the variables three questionnaires were used including:   Fam & Taylor (1999) EBT educational performance questionnaire, Keramati (2001) social skills questionnaire and a researcher-constructed extra-curricular studying questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, Independent T-Test and Mann–Whitney U test were used to analyze the data. The analyses revealed that extra-curricular studying has no significant effect on the educational performance of the students but it has a significant positive effect on their social skills. Moreover, no significant difference between the educational performance and social skills of the male and female students was observed.