Literature Review

Engaging in extracurricular activities is an important part of our lives, as it shapes us

to be who we are. Be it a sport, where you train your body to be healthier and stronger, or
just a chess club, where you can compete with others and improve your brain skills. A
statistical analysis carried out by the US Census bureau in 2014 stated that 6 out of 10
children participate in extracurricular activities. These children have been seen to have
better attention spans, greater ability to work as a team and to empathize with others as
well as to be role models to them.

In Sri Lanka, children in elementary and middle schools are encouraged by their
parents, to engage in as many extracurricular activities as they can. But as they get older,
the same parents try to discourage their children from participating in activities that do not
necessarily involve studying. This is because they believe that their children won’t have
enough time to study if they spend their time doing sports or participating in clubs. As
those children finish school and enter university, they themselves become too lazy to
engage in activities outside lectures, and end up only having the knowledge of books.

In KDU, both day scholars and cadets have the option of engaging in a sport of their
choice. This is to improve their physical wellbeing, as well as to build teamwork skills and
self-confidence. But when we look at the turn up of participants, the majority consists of
cadets and not many day scholars. This may be due to many reasons. Day scholars have a
lot of freedom; they can chose to do an extracurricular activity or not, whereas for cadets,
it is compulsory to do at least one sport, along with their general physical training. Day
scholars have undergone less fitness training than cadets, so they usually don’t like to tire
themselves, and they end up not participating in any sports. While the cadets have to
balance both their academic work and their military training, day scholars only have to
worry about their academic exams. So they tend to only focus on their lectures and studies,
rather than divide their time for other activities.

When looking at the participants of other extracurricular activities, such as clubs and
societies, the majority seem to consist of day scholars. This is mainly because they have
more time to engage in non-sport activities than the cadets.

We are carrying out this questionnaire to gain an idea about the extracurricular
activities that the students of KDU participate in, their reasons for doing so, and the
benefits and problems of their decisions in participating or not participating in those
activities. This will help to find out the reasons as to why some activities are more popular
to cadets than to day scholars and vice versa.

The aim of this questionnaire is to identify if the majority of KDU undergraduates, day
scholars and cadets alike, participate in extracurricular activities, and the impacts it has on
their academic and social life. We’d be thankful if you could give us a bit of your time to fill
the questionnaire below, and aid in our research.

1. Do you like engaging in extracurricular activities?

Yes
No
Why?

2. What are they?

Sports: Clubs: Societies:

Cricket Rotract Club Biomedical
Football ERIC Society
Basketball Toastmasters Royal Aviation
3. How many hours do you spendOther
Rugby on extracurricular
(Specify) activities? Society
Tennis Other
Badminton
1-2 hours (Specify)
Other (Specify)
2-5 hours
5 or more hours

4. What is your purpose in doing those activities?

5. Do extracurricular activities affect your studies?

Yes
No
How?

6. How do you manage your studies while engaging in those activities?

7. What are the benefits you have gained by doing them?

8. If you don’t like to participate, what do you often do?

Listen to music
Playing games
Travelling
Reading
Other (Specify)

9. If you are not doing any extracurricular activities, what are the advantages of that?

10. What are the problems you face by not doing those?

11. What challenges do you face when engaging in those activities?