Peer group influence and academic performance of secondary school students in english language

RESEARCH METHOD 
Descriptive design was used in the research. The study area was Calabar 
Municipality Area of Cross River State Nigeria. The sampling technique adopted 
for this study was the simple random sampling technique. The purpose of using 
the technique was to compose a sample that would yield research data that can be 
generalized to a larger sample. The sample for the study consisted of two hundred 
(200) respondents randomly selected from the study area. The instruments 
adopted for data collection were a questionnaire and an achievement test. The 
study instruments were validated by two experts in measurement and evaluation. 
The reliability estimate was obtained through test re-test method. Pearson product 
moment correlation was used to test the hypothesis, at 0.05 level of significance. 
RESULT  
The null hypothesis states that there is no significant relationship between 
negative peer group influence and academic performance of students in English 
language. Pearson product moment correlation statistics was used to test the 
hypothesis and result is presented in Table 1. 
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3606183

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TABLE 1 
Pearson product moment correlation between peer group influence and academic 
performance of students in English language. (N = 200) 
Variables 
Ẍ 
SD 
r 
Peer group influence
14.27
3.07 
0.49 
Academic performance
26.62
5.41 
P<0.05; df = 198; critical r-value = 0.159 
The result in Table 1 shows that the calculated r-value of 0.53 was found 
to be greater than the critical r-value of 0.159 at 0.05 level of significance, with 
198 degrees of freedom. With this result, the null hypothesis was rejected. This 
means that the more students are influenced positively by their peers, the better 
the students’ performance in English language.