Social Anxiety, Self-efficacy and Academic Achievement in Matric Students of Lahore, Pakistan

Abstract

The present research was conducted to investigate the relationship of social anxiety and self-efficacy with academic achievement in boys and girls using1000 Matric students (boys = 500, girls = 500) with age range 13 to15 years (M = 14.55, SD = 1.38) of 9th grade by means of stratified random sampling technique from different high schools in Lahore District. Academic performance was measured by a valid achievement test, especially developed for this purpose. Protocols used in the study were i) Urdu version of Interaction Anxiousness Scale (Leary, 1983) to assess the level of social anxiety and ii) Urdu version of General Self efficacy Scale (GSES) (Schwarzer & Jerusalem,1995) to measure the self-efficacy of participants. Correlation, regression analysis, independent samples t test and one way ANOVA were run for data analyses. The findings suggest that academic achievement has significant positive correlation with self-efficacy and negative relationship with social anxiety. Self esteem, social anxiety, gender, parental education and monthly income of family turned out to be the strongest predictors of academic achievement of students. Girls outperformed boys on academic achievement test. Conversely the boys displayed higher level of self-efficacy and lower level of social anxiety than girls.