Relationship between Personality Traits and Academic Underachievement among Students in Ekeremor and Yenagoa Local Government Areas of Bayelsa State, Nigeria

The study examined the relationship between selected personality traits and academic underachievement among secondary school students in Bayelsa State. The population of the study consisted of 3,610 SSII students in the two local government areas. Two research questions and two hypotheses were answered and tested respectively using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). Instruments used to gather data were; the Bakare’s Progressive Matrices (BPM), used to identify students’ mental abilities, Teachers Made Achievement Test (TMAT) on four subjects and Students’ Personality Descriptive Scale (SPTDS) adopted from the Costa and McCrae [1] Five NEO FFI scale. The study used 200 students identified as underachievers. Pearson products moment correlation was used to answer the research questions and probability level with chosen alpha level of 0.05 used to test the hypotheses. The study found a significant negative relationship between agreeableness and academic underachievement while a significant positive relationship exists between neuroticism and academic underachievement among the senior secondary school students used in the study. Based on these outcomes, it was recommended among others that taking students’ personality inventory in secondary school should be made a regular exercise across the academic levels and school-based reinforcement programme should be designed by education administrators to encourage high ability students to maintain and improve their academic performance as well as monitor cases of underachievement.