ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent social capital and self-control serve as predictors of academic achievement in Christian Religious Studies among secondary school students in Abia State. Eight research questions and eight null hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a correlational research design. The sample for the study consisted of a total of 439 SS II students drawn through multistage sampling techniques from the entire population of 4392 senior secondary school class II students offering Christian Religious Studies in Abia State in 2022/2023 academic session. Three instruments titled “Social Capital Questionnaire (SCQ), Self-control questionnaire (SCQ) and Christian Religious Studies Achievement Test (CRSAT)” were developed by the researcher and were used for data collection. These instruments were subjected to face validation by three experts. The CRSAT was validated using the Content Validity which was derived using the Table of Specification. Cronbach Alpha was adopted to determine the internal consistency reliability of the instruments and reliability indices of 0.76 and 0.84 were obtained for the SCQ and SCQ respectively. The reliability of the Christian Religious Studies Achievement Test was determined using Kuder-Richardson (KR-21) which gave reliability coefficient of 0.89. The data generated for this study were analyzed using Pearson’s r, R² (coefficient of determination) to answer the research questions while linear regressions and multiple regression analysis were used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 levels of significance. Results revealed as follows: Joint components of social capital (networks, norms and sanctions) predicted the academic achievement in Christian Religious Studies among secondary school students to a very highly positive and significant extent. However, networks in social capital had the highest percentage contribution of 76.4%; followed by sanctions in social capital with 63%, and lastly norms in social capital which predicted 61.2% of academic achievement in Christian Religious Studies among secondary school students; joint components of self-control (self-awareness, self-monitoring and self-management) predicted the academic achievement in Christian Religious Studies among secondary school students to a very highly positive and significant extent. However, self-monitoring in self-control had the highest percentage contribution of 77.6%; followed by self-awareness in self-control with 71.2%, and lastly self-management in self-control which predicted 52.7% of academic achievement in Christian Religious Studies among secondary school students. It was thus recommended that parents or guardians, teachers, psychologists/counsellors should educate students on the importance of social capital and self-control in academic achievement.