Influence of Residential Setting on Student Outcome

Abstract

Citation: Etikan İ, Bala K, Babatope O, et al. Influence of residential setting on student outcome. H1 3 : There is significant relationship between students' accommodation location and their age. Various researchers have attempted to investigate the roles played by school residential housing system and those of outside campus on students' academic performance. Few of such are discussed in the literature review. Literature review In academic environment settings, one of the pivotal roles of a school management is to provide an enabling conducive environment and facilities for learning as inferred by Schroeder and Maple. In a study conducted by De Araujo and Murray, 7 they concluded that the advantages of staying on campus tend to improve student performance. The result reveals that being on campus could have a positive impact on academic performance of students during their time of academic period. Thompson et al., 8 in their study also revealed that residing on campus for a new student tend to make them more progressive in academics with educational higher performance. By focusing on areas of reading comprehension, critical rational and mathematics, Pascarella et al., 9 observed also that new students who lived on campus, experienced greater improvement more than student that stays off-campus. In an update study, Pascarella and Terenzini 10 conducted a study on the effects of campus residency on educational outcomes of students. In the study, they opined that campus residency has a positive correlational relationship with academic performance and other students outcomes the research seek to evaluate. Likewise, Allen et al., 11 research concluded that the dormitories student's persistent interaction and connection with the institution's local community improve their tendency to have improved learning outcomes. However, other researchers have a deviation to some of these above assertions. For instance, Delucchi 12 opined that only very few students living in the hostels have an improved academic performances. He found out also that students living outside the campus with close walking distance to the institution also perform better than those living on campus. Also, a study conducted by Bowman and Partin 13 on influence of student residency on academic performance concluded that there is no significant impact of residency location of students on their academic performance irrespective of where the students live either on campus or outside the campus. Pascarella and Terenzini, 9 Astin, 14 and Kuh and Hu 15 all of them discovered that faculty student of interaction in academic nature improves student performance and student satisfaction. Kuh and Hu 15 further find that students' interaction with faculty outside of class positively influences effort put forth by students. Even non-academic university resources may help improve students' performance. Toutkoushian and Smart 16 find that increasing institutional spending leads to gains in students' learning, as well as their interpersonal skills. However, they find that allocating more money specifically to academic support does not necessarily improve learning. Non-academic resources that we consider include university-sponsored, clubs and organizations (admittedly, these do include some academic clubs, but there are also many that are social in nature and based on common interests and activities) and use of university provided fitness resources. Besides providing food and shelter, residence hall administrators provide a variety of activities and services to create an environment that cause students to develop close relationships with each other and which encourages students to study and socialize together. However dynamics of social interactions and the influence of associates are liable to be dissimilar with on-campus dormitories than off-campus apartments. In terms of gender difference, Oppewal et al., 17 in their research indicated that gender type also influence the choice of student selecting their housing location. This assertion was further corroborated by Jabareen; 18 Wang and Li. 19 When conducting her research on gender response to preference of accommodation selection, Amole, 20 found out that there was no significant difference in the response of male or female as regards their preference for on campus or off campus housing accommodation. Age wise, Devlin, 21 found out that this play a key role in preference for the choice of residential accommodation for students. Relative to financial capability of students, The Millennial 22 in a study concluded that college students usually below 25 years are not often work engaged. Hence, their financial spending is limited. Therefore, they express strong preference for on campus student housing due to their pricing affordability (Gavin; 23 Mintel, 24). In addition, Mintel 24 also stated that this age category do have strong interest in social activities which university hostels readily, hence this becomes a strong attractiveness for them to prefer on campus hall of residence. 25-37 Methodology The descriptive survey research design was put to use in this study. The research intends to study if the housing locations of students have an impact on their academic performance. In a survey, a representative sample is chosen from a population and studied. Findings made from the representative sample are used to generalize for the whole population. Hence, the survey made use of 278 student respondents which are samples from the student population of Near East University, Cyprus. The respondents are mixture of students residing in the school's hall of residences, near campus and those living in farther places away from the university environment. A set of structured questionnaire was designed and developed for the purpose of data collection. The questionnaire was meant to elicit responses from the students regarding the impact their accommodation locations have on their academic performance. The questionnaires were administered to the students and consequently retrieved upon providing answers to the questions asked. After collection, descriptive statistics were used to describe the structure of the respondents and their different composition. In order to investigate if the choice of students' place of abode has any significant relationship on their academic performances, a test on measure of association was employed by using the Chi-Square Statistic of test of independence. Specifically, the Chi-Square statistic test of independence which is an example of a non-parametric analytical tool used is in analyzing categorical data by examining if there is an existence of any form of dependence or relationship among categorical variables under examinations. The test was conducted at a 0.05 level of significance with the aid of SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) computer software version 20. Data presentation and analysis This section discusses the demographic characteristics of the respondents and evaluates other findings which are relevant to the study.