ISSUES THAT INFLUENCE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: an analysis with students from the Accountancy Course inside Classroom

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to identify the impact if issues such as learning style, absences, age and gender on the academic performance of Accountancy students. The investigation is justified by the concern about understanding in which way these issues influence the student’s performance. After the administration of questionnaires for Accountancy students in a college, in 2011 second semester, we obtained a sample of 208 valid questionnaires. In order to collect the learning style, we used Honey-Alonso questionnaire of Learning Styles. Departing from these data, it was possible to assess how Honey-Alonso learning styles would influence the performance of students who were assessed, using the final academic result of the students as Proxy for performance. The multiple regression analysis technique allowed us to evaluate learning styles, absences, age of respondents, or even gender and their relation with the final performance. The results showed no significant influence of learning styles on academic performance of the students analyzed. The variable “absences” was the only one that presented significant behavior. So, what really determines performance is the students’ effort to develop their knowledge.