CHAPTER -12

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS :

The aim of the present investigation was to analyse the

consequences of social and economical deprivation on the academic

achievement of school going adolescents. Academic achievement

depends on many psychological ar.d social factors. The most

inportant of these factors is intelligence. The relation between

measure of academic achievement and that of intelligence is usually

considerably high and this is established through a number of

studies. Apart from intelligence the second most irnportant factor

may be achievement motivation. A student may possess high level

of intelligence but unless he has achievement motivation, he may

not apply his intelligence to its maximum capacity and consequently

his performance in the academic field may not be as high as it

should be .Keeping all these points into consideration the plan of

the study was drawn. It was decided that

(a) the samples would be students reading in Class X of Bengali

Medium schools situated in different districts of West Bengal. The

students reading in Class X were selected with a view that a common

achievement score for them would be available soon as they were

expected to appear in the Madhyamik Examination within a few months

The Bengali. Medium schools were selected because majority of the

schools in West Bengal-belong to this category. Any conclusion that

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may be drawn on the basis of the study would be applicable for

students reading in these schools which represent majority of the

school population.

(b) On the basis of existing standardised (1) Intelligence

tests, (2) Achievement Motivation tests, and (3) Prolonged

Deprivation Scales, one of the test or inventory from each

category would be selected depending upon the level of the sairples

used in this study. No new tests would be constructed.

(c) Before conducting the final study a pilot study would be

undertaken and the plan of the final study would be based on the

results obtained in the pilot study.

With this idea in view, in the pilot study (1) Prolonged

Deprivation Scale of Misra and Tripathi (English Version),

(2) Mehta's Achievement values and Anxiety Inventory, and

(3) Chatterji and Mukherjee1s Test of General Ability were

administered on 99 students reading in Class X of four different

schools. The annual examination marks of the students were taken

as measure of their academic achievement. The scores were analysed

and it was observed

(i) Prolonged deprivation score was negatively correlated

•> (-.38) with annual examination marks.

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(ii) Score of General Ability Test was positively

correlated with annual examination marks (.34) and

at the same time negatively correlated with score,

on Prolonged Deprivation Scale (-.21).

(iii) AIVI total score was positively related to annual

examination marks (.32) and General Ability Score

(.12).
During the test administration it was observed that the students

faced lot of difficulties in understanding the statements written

in English and hence it was decided to translate the Prolonged

Deprivation Scale into Bengali. It was further decided to replace

the Achievement Values and Anxiety Inventory by Mehta's

Achievement Motivation Test. This test was semi projective in

nature and the subject was required to write down stories on the

basis of six pictures presented in the test. It was thought that

this test would measure achievement motivation better than the

Achievement Values and Anxiety Inventory. Raven's Progressive

Matrices was used instead of Test of General Ability as it is a

non-verbal test.

For the final study a survey of the Bengali Medium High

Schools of West Bengal was conducted. Through this survey some

information regarding the standard of the school was gathered.

On the basis of the responses received the schools were stratified

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into 64 strata, depending on 16 districts, location of the schools

i.e., rural and urban and boys and girls. Out of these 64 strata

one school was selected at random.

Next in each selected school students reading in Class X

were tested by administering

(i) Raven's Progressive Matrices

(ii) Translated Bengali Version of Prolonged

Deprivation Scale

(iii) Achievement Motivation Test.

Academic achievement was determined by collecting the

Madhyamik Examination marks, when available.

The answer sheets were scored manually and the analysis

started pooling the data first and then the total sample was

divided into eight subgroups to investigate the difference in

the effect of socio-economic deprivation if any on academic

achievement of the urban and rural students or boys and girls

students.

(a) It was observed that there was wide difference in the

average of the intelligence score and academic achievement score

between the urban and rural groups.

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(b) Out of the eight subgroups the most deprived one was the

rural boys, whereas the least deprived subjects were the urban

girls.

(c) Surprisingly the achievement motivation as measured

through TAT type test failed to induce the urge for academic

achievement among the subjects. In most of the cases the relation

was slightly negative and at the same time insignificant. The

achievement motivation score was very low in all the groups which

indicated absence of the concept of motivation or desire to achieve

excellence among these subjects. The subjects failed to think

independently and to construct stories even through fantasy. As a

result the procedure which tried to measure achievement motivation

through fantasy failed. It is not however concluded that achievement

motivation is negatively related with academic achievement; what

is stressed is that the procedure of assessment was not appropriate

so far as the group was concerned. Hence it was decided to

eliminate the score of achievement motivation from the final

analysis.

(d) The result indicated that the socio-economic deprivation

as measured through Prolonged Deprivation Scale was differentially

related with academic achievement in different groups; urban,

rural, boys and girls. An intelligent student usually attains

better academic achievement. It is a known fact that even

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deprivation for a prolonged period can not hinder their academic

achievement. To investigate this fact, Partial correlation was

worked out between prolonged deprivation and academic, achievement

controlling the effect of intelligence. In all most all the groups

the Partial correlation between prolonged deprivation and academic

achievement was found to be less than the corresponding direct

correlation. The reason may be that'prolonged deprivation hampers

the development of intelligence which in turn adversely affects

the performance of the students in the academic field. These two

adverse effects jointly lower the score of the student in the

examination further.

(e) To investigate the effect of different factors like

prolonged deprivation, intelligence, sector and sex on academic

achievement, the analysis of covariance was worked out.

In the analysis of covariance the effect of intelligence

was controlled to study the direct adverse effect of prolonged

deprivation on academic achievement and at the same time the

other treatment effects had been tested by applying usual

analysis of variance with the adjusted criterion variable. The

main findings were that (i) the main effects of sector and

prolonged deprivation on academic achievement were significant,

(ii) The academic achievement did not vary significantly across

sex. (iii) The interaction effect of sector and prolonged

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deprivation on academic achievement was significant only at the

5% level when all other interactions viz., sector and sex, sex

and prolonged deprivation and sector, sex and prolonged

deprivation were found to be insignificant. It may be revealed

from the results that though the averages of academic achievement

for boys and girls were significantly different but after

elimination of intelligence effect the difference became

insignificant as the sex effect in the ANOVA was insignificant.

(f) The results so far presented have taken the global score

of Prolonged Deprivation Scale as an index of socio-economic

status.. But deprivation indices have stressed on some specific

areas of life. It was decided at this point to investigate'

separately fifteen areas of deprivation as these areas might have

differential importance so far as academic achievement was

concerned. So analysis was carried on treating the variables

separately and how these areas were related with variables like

intelligence and academic achievement had been studied. The

differential effects of these socio-economic deprivational areas

on intelligence and academic achievement in rural and urban

populations as well as male and female populations were

investigated. It was observed from the results that most of the

correlations between intelligence and fifteen deprivational areas

were negative and significant. The reason might be that deprivation

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of environmental experiences hampered the growth of intelligence.

Deprivation of facilities in home, clothing, food and different

socio-cultural experiences were found to have the most damaging

effect on the proper growth of intelligence.

(g) Similar results were observed from the correlations among

fifteen deprivational areas and academic achievement. It indicated

that with respect to academic achievement the most damaging factor

was inadequate home environment and this was followed by economical

factors like lack of clothing, food etc.. Proper parental

characteristics, emotional experience and different socio-cultural

experiences were found to be congenial for the academic achievement

of the subjects but economical deprivation was found to be

more-damaging than emotional deprivation.

(h) It may be said that the areas of prolonged deprivation were

not equally important with respect to development of intelligence

and academic achievement. The next step was to conduct suitable

analysis which helped to establish the relative importance of

these areas including intelligence. The analysis adopted for this

purpose was stepwise regression analysis. In course of this

analysis the most important predictor variable came out in the

first step followed by relatively- next effective one and so on.

From the results it was clear that of all the variables intelligence
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was the most contributing factor for academic achievement.

Prolonged deprivation, both emotional and economical adversely-

affected the academic achievement.

(i) Among the fifteen areas of deprivation some had fairly

high degree of correlations among themselves and others were not

so related. So factor analysis was done to find out their

independence and to extract the common factors underlying these

fifteen variables. Three factors emerged from this analysis.

Factor I was identified as "physico-economic deprivation". Though

the loadings were not identical in each group yet -the same areas

with various magnitude of loadings were covered by Factor I. It

represented deprivation related to clothing, food, home

environment, housing condition, economic sufficiency and to some

extent the characteristics of parents. Factor II was termed as

"deprivation from affection -and caring attitude" as it was related

with areas like childhood experiences, motivational and emotional

experiences etc.. Factor III was related with areas like travel

and recreation, religious experiences and miscellaneous

socio-cultural experiences. This factor might be named as

"deprivation from cultural and recreational activities".

After extraction of factors, the factor scores corresponding

to the three factors were worked out. The correlations -were computed

among the variables like intelligence,, academic achievement and

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three independent factor scores. Many of the correlations were

negatively significant. Factor I had maximum negative relation

with both intelligence and academic achievement. Other two

factors were found to be less important than Factor I, though

some of the correlations were significant. Partial correlations

were worked out between the factor scores and academic achievement

controlling the effect of intelligence. The values were less than

the corresponding direct correlations. The reason might be that

the three types of deprivations identified by three factors were

also negatively related with intelligence which had a positive

correlation with academic achievement. When the adverse effect of

low intelligence was eliminated the relation became less negative.

It can be mentioned here that no study is free from

limitation. In the field of education and psychology specially

the result of any investigation is not fully reliable where one

can guarantee 100% accuracy and the same is applicable here also.

There are unlimited possibilities of further research in this area.

For example, rural boys' group behaved in a different manner from

the other groups. Their academic achievement was neither related

with prolonged deprivation inversely nor with achievement

.motivation directly. In this group none of the fifteen areas.of

deprivation had significant correlations with intelligence. So

this group should be further probed to find out the reasons behind

this deviation and that can be the objective of another study.