Influence of adolescent friendship on Kenyan secondary school students academic achievement in Eldoret municipality, Kenya

Abstract

Peer interactions have been argued to play a major role in students' academic achievements. Some adolescents easily manage to establish and maintain healthy relationships that promote their academic achievement while others do otherwise. The main objective of this study was to investigate the influence of adolescent friendship on their academic achievement with a view to give suggestions on how adolescents can be facilitated to initiate and maintain healthy relationships that will influence their academic achievement positively. The study was guided by Erick Erickson's (1979) psychosocial theory. The theory is useful for its application involving personal awareness and personality development that tend to influence academic achievement. The study was conducted among Form two students from ten secondary schools in Eldoret Municipality of Uasin Gishu County in Kenya. The quantitative research designs that were used in this study was causal-comparative. The study used research questionnaire and interview for data collection. The target population of this study consisted of Form two students in ten secondary schools in Eldoret Municipality. From the ten selected schools, 50% of Form two students were selected using simple random sampling procedures and assigned to the samples. Data was collected and analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The inferential statistics that was used in this study was chi square statistics at 99% confidence interval. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the data in terms of tables, graphs distribution and percentages. Statistics package for social sciences (SPSS) was used to process data obtained. The results of the study have shown that there is significant effect (p<O.O1) effect of adolescent friendship on academic performance of students in secondary schools. Students who were more popular in schools tend to pose good academic results as opposed to those who had less popular in schools. The results further revealed that those students who had high typical patterns of friendship tend to excel in academic as opposed to those who had low typical patterns of friendship. The study recommends that teachers, parents and schools should create a conducive environment through which health adolescent friendship could be developed to improve on performance of students in schools.