A Study of Academic Achievement among Adolescents Belonging to Different Sociometric Groups

The social instinct of man makes him confront the rest of human nature and this results to the creation of social structure. Man has a gregarious tendency, one of the powerful factors which tend to form social groups even in an organization like the school. These groups determine the behaviour of the members. During interaction of the group, the members make up expectations which they share and behave in a certain stipulated and tolerated way towards each other in different conditions. Society has very rarely seen anyone isolated absolutely in life with his or her own family and peers, and the ordinary member of our society belongs to numerous groups most of them just being small. A school as any other publicly constituted not to mention organization also presents a considerable amount of social communication among its members. One of the most critical features of social life, liking to the others and their feelings about us are very essential. Human beings promote team spirit. More of these individuals abandon the group than others and when this happens, then it would appear that there is a big variance as regard to the kind of group. And so there are such individuals and still they are there who come and go and still, character of the group is not conquered. It happens where members of the group do not have relations to each other. This acceptance and unacceptance of a person as a member of the group in the class room, is what makes the individual as a socially maladjusted person and this could have contributed to his /her maladjustment in the class room as well as he /she could end up maladjusted in terms of his /her academic achievement too.

There is also a lot of social communication among members of this association that is a school after all. Actually, a school is a mini society. All the process of cooperation, conflict and accommodation that are operating in the society are created or discovered in a school. The focus of socialization within a school is based on instruction between people. The social relation within a school can be examined in relation with the groups that interact within a school. The maximum full-size is the organization of scholars that possesses its ethical and moral code and its common attitudes to the individuals of the identical organization (Stanley, 1967).Liking to people and their feeling closer to us are the most sizeable part of social lifestyles. And the acceptance of others can really do much to a persons well being. It is significant to have friends. The feeling of liking results in more association and they influence the interaction behaviour of an individual. The formations of the corporations are pegged at the attraction between individuals (Secord and Backman, 1964 P. 238).

Justification of the Study

Whether a student is acceptable or unacceptable in the class has an effect on his/her academic performance. Belongingness helps to build positive character in him/her as the students are accepted by the rest of the class. These aspects in the development of such traits are healthy towards attainment of desirable academic performance. The reputation additionally contributes to gratifying the students in social interaction with the rest of the students within the classroom and this delight, to the big extent, may also assist him/her to boom the level of instructional performance. success in research has a rather negative or superb association with the sociometric rank of students. except the educational overall performance of the scholars greatly determines their social popularity within the classroom groups and in turn, these groups create a positive or a negative emotion towards the prevailing school conditions or circumstances. Group rejections may be enough to build negative personality of students who have direct connection with their school adaptation. To some degree, this maladjustment directly affects the performance of students in academics.  Keeping this in consideration, study into the academic performance of the students of X class that fall under the various sociometric groupings of popular, neglected, rejected and isolated will now be undertaken.

Definitions of the terms used

i. Sociometric Groups: those have been discovered via the Sociometric take a look at. 4 businesses could be selected.

ii. Populars: A famous or famous person is person who secures a large variety of positive selections.

iii. Neglectee: A neglectee is one which gets fantastically a few excellent alternatives in a social scenario.

iv. Rejectee: A rejectee is one that gets bad selections.

v.  Isolated:   A isolate is one who received neither positive nor negative choices

• Sociometric Scores: Number of choices- likes and dislikes obtained with the aid of an individual on a Sociometric take a look at.
• X Class Students: In this have a look at, 10th class adolescent students of 15-sixteen age organization studying among various co-instructional authorities and private institutions of Jammu city of J&ok, were included for this observe.
• Academic Achievement: In this study, instructional achievement approach the share of typical marks obtained via tenth elegance college students in their very last examinations of  preceding classes (8th & ninth). the share of combination marks received changed into taken into consideration as an index of educational achievement.
• Sex: It protected X elegance boys & women studying in excessive or higher Secondary schools.

• To discover popular, ignored, rejected and isolate boys and girls on the premise of sociometric status rankings.
• To take a look at and compare the significance of differences of suggest ratings on “Educational Fulfillment” between popular & overlooked ; popular & rejected ; popular & remoted  and rejected & isolated sociometric agencies of students.
• To study and evaluate the significances of differences of imply scores on “Educational Success” the various distinct sociometric companies of students in boys and girls groups respectively.
• To examine whether or not there are sizeable intercourse variations in “Academic Success” among the popular, neglected, rejected and remoted sociometric groups of students.

• There will be no substantial mean differences on “Academic Fulfillment” between famous & unnoticed; famous & rejected; famous& isolated; overlooked &rejected; omitted &remoted; rejected & remoted sociometric groups of students.
• There might be no great suggest differences on “Academic Fulfillment” among the one-of-a-kind sociometric corporations of college students in boys and women respectively.
• There will be no significant sex differences in “Academic- Achievement” among the popular, neglected, rejected and isolated sociometric groups of students

• The existing look at have become constrained to X elegance university college students studying in diverse authorities. and private high and better Secondary colleges of Jammu District.
• The present look at was limited to the co-instructional college handiest.
• The prevailing have a look at changed into limited to 4 sociometric companies and viz famous, not noted, rejected and isolated.
• The scholars in unique sociometric companies have been diagnosed on a three standards 3 preference sociometric questionnaire best.
• The yearly exam marks of  education transformed into percentage of X beauty college students have been taken as raw records or record of academic success of college students.

The contemporary schooling system targets at shaping complete personality of the child in school. In this respect, the role of the informally structured peer group comes to be acknowledged now. Such vast impact is produced by the Peer group acceptance-rejection on the developing personality of the pupil. Evidence points to the fact that, room sociometric status of any individual is affiliated to personality. This fact has sufficient empirical findings to support it. The socially admired pupils would have the traits that would be suitable in the favorable social interpersonal interaction.

In recent years, growing recognition has been given to the significant influence that group membership has on individual behavior and development. Research on peer relationships among children has expanded rapidly, with a major focus on the development of social competence and its critical role within peer groups.

The recent focus of developmental psychologists on children's peer relationships has been matched by a growing interest among child clinical psychologists in enhancing these interactions through the implementation of intervention programs. To a great extent, such efforts based on empiricism are informulated by the notion that peer relationships during childhood have crucial significance in respects to social development and subsequent good adjustment in adulthood. According to the investigations in the literature, childhood peer adjustment difficulties and disturbances presage the presence of concurrent and subsequent maladjustments. The research findings of the disturbed adults and the contemporary research on psycho-social attributes of the disturbed children show that the disturbed children who experience problems of adjusting with peers are likely to have mental health issues. Several studies have explored problematic peer relationships during childhood as potential indicators of future challenges, including a history of severe behavioral issues, adult diagnoses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, mental health difficulties, and involvement in juvenile delinquency.

Bonney (1941, 1946) found that elementary and high school students tended to choose peers who demonstrated similar levels of academic success. This suggests that academic performance is often linked to a student's social acceptance. Supporting this, Grossman and Wrighter (1948) observed that sixth-grade students with higher sociometric status scored significantly better on standardized reading tests compared to those with lower sociometric standing. Interestingly, Ohlsen and Dennis (1951) noted that among college students, those in the least accepted group sometimes had higher academic averages than their more socially accepted peers.

According to Laughlin (1952), the academic performance and age chronologically were of lower significance to social acceptance or rejection. The study involving 2000 adolescent boys and girls was conducted by Feinberg (1953) in which the most acceptable students had an average score above the least acceptable group. In a large investigation of filth and pupils of eighth grade, Buswell (1953) registered that the most accepted pupils on a sociometric test ranked far higher in mastery of basic subject skills relative to the least popular pupils.

Achievement (Test) in other school subjects and sociometric status correlated once again at correlation co-efficients of between .14 and .36 at grades 2-7 (Laughlin 1954). No relation was found between sociometric status and achievement by Lindzey and Urban (1954) to college students. They however failed to mention that the range of achievement was not much among college students or a group. Brown (1954) has additionally stated difference in scholastic averages between excessive and espresso sociometric reputation college students at the immoderate school grade. The most big students had greater scholastic averages than college college students in least group.  According to Bonny, it was said that the students ranking high on sociometric rating and activity tended to demonstrate high level of achievement as compared to the low negotiating students (1955).

Population

The population for this study comprises all 10th-grade students studying in both government and private co-educational schools located in the Jammu District.

Sampling

The initial sample for the study will include 500 randomly selected students from different schools. From this group, 80 students will be chosen based on specific sociometric criteria, with equal representation from each category: Popular (20), Neglected (20), Rejected (20), and Isolates (20). Each group will include an equal number of boys and girls. For the purpose of the study, each class section will be considered as a separate unit.

Tools employed and their description

Ø    Sociometric Questionnaire:

The present study utilized a sociometric questionnaire designed by Dr. A. N. Sharma to categorize students into four distinct sociometric groups: popular, neglected, rejected, and isolated. The questionnaire asked students to identify peers they would prefer to associate with during meaningful activities or events, as well as those they would prefer not to engage with in such situations (see Appendix-1). This method of grouping was based on a structured framework originally proposed by Bronfenbrenner, providing a consistent reference for social classification.

Academic Achievement:

In terms of academic achievement, the researcher talked to the examination In charge of each of the sampled schools and asked him or her about the marks that the students have used in current  annual examinations (VI and VII instructions). examination In rate teacher turned into gracious to assist the researcher and through this fact the annul examination scores of  classes of popular, overlooked, rejected and isolate students which have been already identified by means of the researcher have been obtained. The marks had been delivered and summed up after which percentage discovered to provide you with acadiec fulfillment index rating of every of the chosen student.

Statistical Techniques Employed

Mean, Standard deviation and critical ratio (Verma and Sharma, 1990).

Interpreting data is a crucial aspect of any research endeavor. It involves examining the organized information to identify underlying patterns or meanings. Meaningful conclusions can only be drawn after a thorough analysis of the data.The one-of-a-kind answers of the facts provided are investigated at numerous instructions to decide new records. The records used turned into obtained via finding the percent of score that each of the famous, not noted, rejected and isolate Sociometric organization of college students had were given within the  past annual examinations viz. VIII and IX that had been merged together and delivered to acquire instructional achievement index ratings of every of the scholars. Then appropriate statistical methods as described above were employed in evaluation of the records. The analysis of the statistics received has been carried out under the subsequent factors.

Table-1: Comparison of imply scores on instructional success between popular & omitted, popular & rejected, popular & isolate, disregarded & rejected, disregarded & isolate and rejected & isolate sociometric businesses of college students.

*significant at 0.01 level and ** significant at 0.05 level

Table-2: Comparison of mean scores on academic achievement between Popular & neglected, Popular & rejected, popular & isolate, neglected & rejected, neglected & isolate and rejected & isolate sociometric groups of boys.

*significant at 0.01 level and ** significant at 0.05 level

Table-3: Comparison of imply rankings on instructional success among famous & overlooked, famous & rejected, popular & isolate, not noted & rejected, left out & isolate and rejected & isolate sociometric businesses of girls.

*significant at 0.01 level and ** significant at 0.05 level

Table-4: Sex variations in “academic success” amongst popular, left out, rejected and isolate students.

*significant at 0.01 level and ** significant at 0.05 level

1. Inferences based on “Academic Achievement” (General View)

• “There is found significant difference between the popular and neglected students. The popular students show higher level of academic achievement then neglected students.
• There is found significant difference academic achievement in comparison to neglected students between the popular and rejected students. The popular students depict higher academic achievement than rejected students.
• There is found significant difference between the popular and isolate students. The popular students depict higher academic achievement than isolate students.
• There is found no significant difference between the neglected and rejected students. The neglected and rejected students are found to be alike in academic achievement.
• There is found no significant difference between the neglected and the isolate students. The neglected and isolate students are found to be alike in academic achievement.
• There is found significant difference between the rejected and the isolate students. The rejected students are found to have higher academic achievement level.”

2. Inferences based on “Academic Achievement” (Boys Group)

• “There is found no significant difference between the popular and the neglected boys. The popular and the neglected boys are alike in academic achievement level.
• There is found no significant difference between the popular and the rejected boys. The popular and the rejected boys are alike in academic achievement level.
• There is found significant difference between the popular and the isolate boys. The popular boys show higher level of academic achievement than isolate boys.
• There is found no significant difference between the neglected and the rejected boys. The neglected and the rejected boys are alike in academic achievement.
• There is found no significant difference between the neglected and the isolate boys. The neglected and the isolate boys are found alike in academic achievement
• There is found no significant difference between the rejected and the isolate boys. The rejected and the isolate boys depict similar academic achievement.”

3. Inferences based on “Academic Achievement”  (Girls Group)

• There may be determined great distinction among the popular and the overlooked girls. The popular ladies depict higher level of academic achievement than the unnoticed girls.
• There is determined widespread difference between the popular and the rejected women. The famous girls depict higher academic achievement level than the rejected women.
• There's determined vast distinction between the famous and the isolate ladies. The popular women depict better educational success degree than the isolate women.
• There may be discovered no massive distinction between the unnoticed and the rejected women. The not noted and the rejected girls depict alike educational achievement degree.
• There is observed no great difference among the unnoticed and the isolate girls. The not noted and the isolate ladies depict alike educational achievement stage.
• There is found significant difference between the rejected and the isolate girls. The rejected girls depict better academic achievement level than isolate girls. 

4. Inferences based on “Academic Achievement” (Sex Differences)

• There is found significant sex difference among the popular students. The popular girls show higher academic achievement level than popular boys.
• There is discovered no considerable sex distinction many of the neglected college students. The neglected boys and girls depict alike educational achievement.
• There may be discovered no huge intercourse distinction some of the rejected college students. The rejected boys and women display same educational fulfillment stage.
• There is found no giant sex distinction the various isolate students. The isolate boys and ladies depict identical academic fulfillment stage.

The findings of this study carry significant implications, highlighting one of the key reasons for conducting educational research. In the present investigation, students identified as popular demonstrated higher levels of academic achievement compared to their neglected, rejected, and isolated peers. Among boys, popular students outperformed isolated students academically. Similarly, in the group of girls, popular students showed higher academic achievement than those categorized as isolated. Additionally, within the female group, popular students also achieved more academically than those in the neglected and rejected categories.

The need is to create interest in the neglected, rejected and isolate students towards their academic subjects by inculcating healthy competition spirit in them. An awareness programmes be organized in the middle/elementary schools from time to time so that the students may develop an insight towards academic subjects and other literary activities. The PRIs and village education committees (V.E.C) should come forward to aware the parents regarding the education of their wards. They should give full time to their Children and not involve them in too much home or domestic affairs. It is the duty of every teacher to conduct the sociometric test in the beginning of every new session, identify various sociometric categories of students and then plan his teaching accordingly. Special attention should be given to unaccepted group of students Viz neglected, rejected and isolate. The teachers should device special teaching dose for these students and provide teaching as and when required.