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ABSTRACT
The need to address the perennial problem of secondary school students’ poor performance in Social Studies in Benin Metropolis informed this study of the possible factors influencing students’ performance, this study focused on students’ birth order and family size as well as their combined influence. Five research questions which were also hypothesized guided this study.
This study adopted the expost-facto non-randomized posttest only design. The population study consisted all the senior secondary school one (SS1) students (7,632) in all the 30 mixed public secondary schools in Benin Metropolis. Twenty percent of this number was selected using simple random sampling method. In each of the six schools selected, 20% of the SS1 students was randomly selected. Thus, 210 SS1 were used as the sample. The instrument used for data collection was a 30-item multiple-choice achievement test. The instrument had a reliability index of 0.776. The data collected was analyzed using ANOVA and ANCOVA at 0.05 level of significance.
The findings of the study were that there is no significant difference in the performance of Social Studies Students in Benin Metropolis; that family size does not have significant influence on students’ performance in Social Studies; that family size significantly influences students’ performance in Social Studies based on sex and that birth order has no significant influence on students’ performance in Social Studies. Also, the findings show that birth order and family size do not have significant combined influence on the students’ performance in Social Studies. It was recommended among others that parents should give children equal educational opportunities and support irrespective of the birth position and sex.
