Factors Contributing To Poor Perfomance in Chemistry in Public Day Schools in Makueni Sub County, Makueni County

Abstract

This study was aimed at finding out the cause or factors that contributes to poor performance in chemistry among students in Makueni Sub County. The study targeted public day secondary schools in the sub-county as the researcher tried to find out the factors that cause poor performance in chemistry. In order to help the researcher gather information with ease, 10% of the total number of public day secondary schools were selected randomly. Moreover, from each school selected, one chemistry teacher together with the principal were picked in order to assist the researcher in gathering the data. Again, ten students were also picked randomly from the selected schools. The research design that was used is correlation research design. Correlation research design is a quantitative method of research in which the researcher tries to find out whether there is a relationship between variables (Stanovich, K. 2007).This research design was used to evaluate the relationship between poor performance and other factors such as student’s attitude towards chemistry as well as availability of facilities.As expected in many situations which revolve around human beings the researcher faced some challenges as he was going through the study. In the study some respondents could deliberately give wrong information when answering the questionnaires. This would distort to some extent the reliability of the study. Again, the researcher faced the challenge of finance in cases where he was travelling to different schools during his study. Moreover, the time frame within which the study was to be conducted and finalized forced the researcher to choose fewer respondents. This negatively affected the reliability of the research study. The researcher collected data using questionnaires and interview guides. The data will then analysed using inferential statistics using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) as well as descriptive statistics which includes frequency and percentage.