JULY - DECEMBER 2019; VOL. 1, NO. 2 J Aziz Fatm Med Den Clg 60 Original Article Comparison of Academic Performance among Boarders and Day-Scholars Benash Altaf, Anam Rehman, Farah Amir Ali ABSTRACT Objective: The aim of the study is to compare the academic performance of boarders and day scholars of a medical college. Methodology: It is a retrospective comparative study conducted at a private medical college, in Faisalabad from January 2019 to September 2019. The study comprised of 214 students that included boarders and day scholars of first year and second year from medical college. Aggregate mean scores of student’s result were categorized into three level for comparison between day scholars and boarders; Level I ≤50%, level II 50%-70%, level III ≥70%. Results: Out of 214 students, 132 (62%) were day scholars and 82 (28%) were boarders. From total of 132 day scholar students, 38 (28.8%), 84 (63.6%) and 10 (7.6%) students overall aggregates were falling in <50%, 50%- 70% and >70% categories, respectively. From total of 82 boarder students, 45 (54.9%), 34 (41.5%) and 3 (3.7%) students overall aggregates were falling in <50%, 50-70 and >70% categories, respectively. Conclusion: Home environment has positive impact on academic performance. KEYWORDS: Academic performance, Boarders, Day scholars, Aggregates. INTRODUCTION Human personality is shaped by the lifelong experiences. Human behavior is formed and modified by their life experience. Family plays a pivotal role in personality building and later on society comes to play its role in behavior modification. Hence, some become effective member of this society while some prefer live in isolation.1 Roman Catholics and Anglicans are believed to be the pioneers for starting the boarding system in 20th century.2,3 Their vision for introducing this system was to help the students in studies whenever they seek help from teachers, their character and confidence building, coping with new environment and hoe to become social. They observe good out comes including student confidence, maturity and independent decision making skills.3 However, in contrast to these benefits of boarding, some studies highlighted the students suffering from low self- esteem, home sickness resulting in poor academic ___________________________________________________________ Dr. Benash Altaf (MBBS, MPhil) Assistant Professor Aziz Fatimah Medical and Dental College, Faisalabad Dr. Anam Rehman (MBBS, MPhil) Senior Demonstrator Aziz Fatimah Medical and Dental College, Faisalabad Dr. Farah Amir Ali (MBBS, MPhil) Professor Aziz Fatimah Medical and Dental College, Faisalabad Correspondence: Dr. Benash Altaf Email. altafbenash@gmail.com performance.4 Moffat and his colleagues identified that hostel life plays a very important role for maturing the personality and student mind as it gives healthy competitive environment with other pupils and peers, motivating students to improve their performance.5 According to some researches, day scholars perform their day to day task in better way as they are boosted with family and friends support.3 While on the other hand, boarders; living in hostels are thought to be positively correlated with academic performance as it keeps them away from family, relatives and unnecessary gatherings, responsible for a significant wastage of time; thus they can easily study at hostel without any interference.6,3 Current study was conducted to evaluate that which environment was favorable for students to obtain appreciable scores in undergraduate medical education. METHODOLOGY This retrospective comparative study was conducted at Aziz Fatimah Medical & Dental College, Faisalabad after taking administrative authority approval. The studied population of 214 MBBS students of first year and second year, including boarders and day scholars recruited by universal sampling of private based medical college. The aggregate of total formative seven Physiology tests conducted from January to September 2019 were evaluated, and the cumulative aggregate score were compared. Written paper comprised of two mailto:altafbenash@gmail.com JULY - DECEMBER 2019; VOL. 1, NO. 2 J Aziz Fatm Med Den Clg 61 parts, multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and short essay questions (SEQs). To minimize the element of bias, structured key was given to all examiners to evaluate the papers. Then, list of boarders and day scholars was provided by the Student Affairs Section. Mean aggregate scores were categorized into three level for comparison between day scholars and boarders; Level I ≤50%; level II 50%-70%, level III ≥70%. Statistical Analysis was done using SPSS version 21.0. Mean of aggregates was compared by applying independent t-test and percentages were compared using chi-square. p value ≤0.05 was taken as significant. RESULTS Out of 214 students, 132 (62%) were day scholars and 82 (28%) were living in hostels. From total of 132 day scholar students, 38 (28.8%), 84 (63.6%) and 10 (7.6%) students overall aggregates were falling in <50%, 50- 70% and >70% categories, respectively. From total of 82 hostel students, 45 (54.9%), 34 (41.5%) and 3 (3.7%) overall aggregates were falling in <50%, 50- 70% and >70% categories, respectively. The result shows the comparison between the boarders and day- scholars which is illustrating the comparison of overall aggregate scores and student categories, shown in Table-1 Table 1: Comparison of overall aggregates scores with study groups (n=214) Study Groups Categories of Overall Aggregates Scores <50% 50-70% >70% n (%) n (%) n (%) Day scholars 132 (62%) 38 (28.8%) 84 (63.6%) 10 (7.6%) Boarders 82 (28%) 45 (54.9%) 34 (41.5%) 3 (3.7%) p value 0.001*, p ≤0.05 is significant The results show that day scholars students overall aggregate results were more competent than boarder students. Chi square test was used to check the significant association between overall aggregate and residence of the medical students. p value ≥0.001 showed that there was a significant association between overall aggregate categories and current residence of medical students. Mean±SD of the overall aggregate of the boarder students and day scholar students were 55.36±11.85 and 45.35±17.5 respectively. Mean comparison showed overall mean aggregate of day scholars higher than the boarder students. Means of the aggregate of boarder and day scholars was compared by t-test, a significant difference was found between means aggregate of boarder and day scholars with p value < 0.0001. Mean difference shown in bar chart between day scholars and boarder students respective to overall aggregates is shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Comparison of mean scores among study group (n=214) p value =0.0001*, p ≤ 0.05 is significant DISCUSSION In developing countries, students are believed to have the potential for doing something fruitful that might prove beneficial for human resource on extensive scale. They can seek education living with their parents and might travel distant areas to achieve their academics. Hostel is a dwelling where students live in a supervised environment.3 Hostel life definitely affects students’ outcomes in terms of his/her academics as well as their behavior as these students alone facing different problems. However, day scholars who live with their parents do not face issues like hostel fooling, unhealthy mess, and home sickness, but they surely do envy the freedom and independence of their hostel collegues.7 Jacob and his colleagues found better academic performance in boarder than the day scholars.3 Study conducted by Mane and his colleagues was also in favor of boarder in terms of better academic scores when they compared academic grades with boarder.8 While on the other hand, this study was contrary to these results showing that day scholars’ performance was much better than the boarders. However study conducted in Pakistan in Peshawar based medical college did not find any significant difference of academic performance among day scholar and boarders.9 Similar to our result, Riya and her colleagues stated that student academic performance is effected more in boarder as they are at risk of developing 55.36± 11.85 45.35 ± 17.72 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 Day scholars Boarders M e a n S co re s Benash Altaf et al. JULY - DECEMBER 2019; VOL. 1, NO. 2 J Aziz Fatm Med Den Clg 62 depression and bad habits which may be due to lack of parents and sibling support, new environment and below the standard mess.10 CONCLUSION Day scholars show comparatively better academic performance than the boarders. Funding Source: None. Conflicts of Interest: None. REFERENCES 1. Amina I, Asir A. A qualitative study investigating the impact of hostel life. IJEMHHR. 2015; 17(22); 511-515. 2. Bahadar N, Mahnaz W, Jadoon S. A comparative analysis of the behaviours and performance of day scholars and boarders students at secondary school level. Am J Educ Res. 2014; 2(8); 600-602. 3. Jacob AM, Kaushik A. A comparative study to assess the health status and academic progress among day scholars and boarders in a selected college of nursing in New Delhi. Int. J. Nurs. Midwif. Res. 2017; 4(2); 2-8. 4. Perveen S, Kazmi SF.Personality dynamics of boarders and day scholars who belong to madrasah and public school. Acad Res Int. 2011; 1(1): 57-72. 5. Moffat. Overall personality development of the students is primed by the boarding school UK [Online] 2011 [cited 2015 Jun 16]. Available from: http//www.buksia.com/ articles/434153_overall personality- development –of -the students-is primed-by-the-boarding-school-uk. 6. Rehman A, Siddiqui A. A comparison between day scholars and hostelites. [Online] 2013 [cited 2015 Jun 16]. Available from: https//prezi. com/ 4ppkjokj2wrj/untitled- prezi/ 7. Ali S , Haider Z , Munir F , Khan H , Ahmed A. Factors contributing to the students’ academic performance: A case study of Islamia University Subcampus. Am Educ Res J. 2013; 1(8); 283-289. 8. Mane D, Kakade SV, Alate M. Assessment of study skills between day scholars & boarders student among nursing students .IJSR ISSN (Online): 2319-7064 ISSN (Online). 2018; 7(8); 348. DOI: 10.21275/ART2019332. 9. Faisal R, Shinwari L, Izzat S. Academic performance of day scholars versus boarders in pharmacology examinations of a medical school in Pakistan. J Pak Med Assoc 2016;(9); 66. 10. Bhattacharya R, Bhattacharya B. Psychological factors affecting student’s academic performance in higher education among students.IJOART.2015;4(1); 2349-3585. Academic Performance of Boarders & Day Scholars Author’s Contribution: Dr. Benash Altaf Statistical analysis, interpretation of results, formulation of tables and manuscript writing. Dr. Anam Rehman Interpretation of results and manuscript writing. Dr. Farah Amir Ali Integrity of data, interpretation of results, formatting the manuscript and proof reading.