An Ordinal Logistic Regression Model to Identify Factors Influencing Students Academic Performance at Njala University

The academic performance of students in learning institutions like universities is a significant determinant of the future socio-economic status of the students concerned. An outstanding students’ academic performance can be regarded as an instrument used to achieve rapid economic, social, political, technological and scientific growth in a developing country like Sierra Leone. It is, therefore, the desire of every university student to be on top of their classes in almost all their university courses. Despite the huge desire to excel, there are both academic and socio-economic factors influencing the academic performance of undergraduate students at Njala University. This work, therefore, aims to identify the main factors influencing students’ academic performance at Njala University. For this purpose, a stratified random sampling method was employed to select 284 respondents proportionately from each university faculty. Data were collected from the selected respondents using structured questionnaires. An ordinal logistic regression modeling technique was used to identify the main factors influencing the academic performance of the undergraduate students at Njala University, Njala Campus. Several factors were initially considered as potential determinants of students’ academic performance. However, the result of the empirical analysis revealed that, the number of study hours; father’s income level; mother’s educational level and mother’s income level are the main factors influencing undergraduate students’ academic performance at Njala University. An increase in the number of study hours increases students’ academic performance; an increase in the father’s income level increases students’ academic performance; an increase in the mother’s educational level increases student’s academic performance while an increase in the mother’s income level decreases students’ academic performance.