SIGNIFICANCE AND UNIQUENESS
The purpose of this study is to identify a number of factors
that represent the relationship between sets of interrelated
variables using principal component factor analysis and to
examine the contribution of each factor to the explanation
of the variance in the students’ academic achievement.
Although there are many factors contribute to the academic achievement of students directly or indirectly, in this study,
family characteristics and self-efficacy are the main factors
that contribute most to the UiTM Johor students’. This will enable administrator or educator to enhance their efforts
in guiding the students in
encounter the problem. The
findings may also contribute
to the reducing the throughput of the failure rates for
every student in the University. It is hoped that this study
would encourage further
related research to identify
the factors that can contribute students to achieve high
CGPA that indirectly reflects
their overall academic performance.
LITERATURE REVIEW
According to Ali et.al (2009) as stated in Mushtaq & Nawaz
Khan (2012) mentioned that school, colleges and universities
have no worth without student as they are most essential
asset for any educational institution. The students’ academic
achievement plays an important role in producing the best
quality graduates who will become great leader and manpower for the country thus responsible for the country’s economic and social development. Students’ achievement in
Universiti Teknologi Mara was based on their Cumulative
Grade Point Average (CGPA). Some of the students won’t
be able to complete their study in final semester because
they had failed certain subject in every semester that leads
them to be dismissed. This scenario happened because of
several factors such as family characteristics and selfefficacy.
Family Characteristics
According to McCoach et al. (2010), a number of malleable
school, teacher, and parent characteristics factors have
been associated with student achievement. It also mentioned by Farooq et al, (2011) that parental education and
family socio-economic status (SES) level or family characteristics have positive correlations with the student’s quality of
achievement based on the results of his study on the subjects
of Mathematics and English. According to Diaz (2003) as stated in Mlambo (2011) mentioned that most of their studies
focus on the three elements that associate with academic
achievement are parents (family causal factors), teachers
(academic causal factors) and students (personal causal
factors).
Self-Efficacy
Merriman (2012) stated that self-efficacy is a person’s belief
in one’s capacity to perform in a certain manner to achieve
certain goals. However, according to Otunuku and Brown
(2007), self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief in how well
he or she can successfully perform behaviors in given situations. In relation to that, Johnson, Crosnoe, and Elder (2001);
Pajares and Schunk (2001); Willams, Willams, Kastberg, and
Jocelyn (2005) as stated in Otunuku and Brown (2007) found
that believing students who
are good at a subject (selfefficacy) and liking a subject have both been shown
to be positively related to
academic outcomes. Although
self-efficacy
has
been found to be a significant factor in predicting
academic achievement by
enhancing motivation to
achieve still students’ selfefficacy (Chowdhury and
Shahabuddin, 2007). Moreover, numerous studies by
Silver, Smith, & Greene
(2001); Witt-Rose (2003); Magogwe and Oliver (2007); as
stated
in
Rashidi
and
Moghadam (2014) have found that self-efficacy affects both
general academic achievement and science achievement
as it has a well-established influence on academic achievement as stated by De Freitas (2012). This elevation in selfefficacy is related to improve academic achievement because students now believe that they can do well academically. As a result, they perform better.
METHODOLOGY
Sample and data collection method
This methodology refers to on how the data was collected in
order to accomplish this study. In completing this study, few
strategies were aligned to ensure that obtained data are
parallel with the findings. In addition, the manner and instruments used in selecting and constructing the techniques or,
in other words, the range of approach used to gather data
are explained in this chapter. It represents a science of a
study on how research is done specifically and systematically
to solve the research problem by logically adopting various
steps (Sridhar, 2008). According to Uma Sekaran (2010), sampling begins with precisely defining the target population.
Population is a group of people that the researcher wants to
investigate. Target population that has been chosen normally depends on the objective of the study. Hence, this study
only focused on 100 out of 1,730 undergraduate students
from four (4) faculties in UiTM Johor as size of the population.
They have been select Y