Graduate School of Management (GSM)

Master of Management (MOM)

Research Proposal

Project Title:

Comparative Study Habits on MBA Full Time and Part

Time Students in GSM, IIUM

Subject: Research Methodology

Subject Code: MGT 6998

Student Name: Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed

Matric No. G1236875

Instructor: Assistant Professor. Dr. MOHD BURHAN BIN IBRAHIM

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter one: Intruduction .............................................................................................. 3

Background of the study…………………………………………………………….3

Definitions of Study Habits ........................................................................................ 4

Problem Statement ..................................................................................................... 5

Research Questions .................................................................................................... 6

Hypothesis of the Study ............................................................................................. 6

Significance of the Study ........................................................................................... 6

Limitation and Future Study ...................................................................................... 7

Chapter two: Literature review ..................................................................................... 8

Introduction .................................................................................................................... 8

Previous Studies and Theories ....................................................................................... 8

Time Management...................................................................................................... 9

Theories and practices of Time Management ....................................................... 11

Class attendance and participation ........................................................................... 12

Class Attendances .................................................................................................... 12

Class Participation .................................................................................................... 14

Exam Preparations.................................................................................................... 15

Theoretical Framework of the study ............................................................................ 17

Figure 1: Conceptual framework ................................................................................. 17

Chapter three: Research Methedology ......................................................................... 18

Methods and Data Collection ................................................................................... 18

sampling and sample size ........................................................................................ 18

sampling and sample size ........................................................................................ 18

Data Analysis ........................................................................................................ 189

Validty & Relaibility ............................................................................................... 19

Conclusion and Recommendation ............................................................................ 20

References .................................................................................................................... 21

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Chapter one: Introduction

Background of the study

It was very interested by many scholars to address the effectiveness of study habits on

academic performance. There is no doubt that the education plays a very important

role to the development and shaping of a student’s mind. The acquisition of new

knowledge, information and the way one responds to the learning environment makes

him a holistic student. It must be uncalculated in our minds that one of the purposes of

education is to train students on how to formulate solutions to potential problems,

how to grow independently, how to apply what they learned during classroom in their

study journey. Students cannot learn simply by being told what to do or by watching

others but they have to practice and practice frequently.

Successful students employ time management systems to create study patterns that

work and use active learning methods to add meaning and interest to their study time

and maintaining their motivation by connecting reasons for study to their life goals

and values. Students must develop, establish and demonstrate good study habits in the

educational process which can raise their academic performance. High educational

achievement attained by the learners in schools is the primary objective of human

development.

Nonis & Hudson (2010) found that through his study about the skills or study habit

was a significant and had direct relationship with the academic performance of

college students. Study habits or strategies is to pay attention in class discussion,

being on time, taking good notes, completing homework in a timely manner, and

reading the study material before a lecture. It is clear that effective study habit

produces useful results in terms of academic achievement, because it has been

expected that students who possess good study habits in general are better performers

than those with poor study habits as this empirical evidence showed.

Nevertheless, no one can ignore the importance of teaching and learning in the whole

process of educational system. This process can only become successful when

academic; teachers are fully co-operated and decide the young generation a bright

future and students must show respect to their parents, and lectures that are their

nurtures. Students are required to come up with effective study habits that help them

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to understand the course and be flight colors in the exams. Learning and studying

effective way in the education is easy for everyone but mostly for smart people and

those who are conscious about the time utilization are expected to be achievers and

excellent in their studies.

Borg et al. (1989) and Okpala, Okpala, and Ellis (2000) found that good study

strategies positively contributed performance in economics courses. Davidson (2002)

also reported a deep study approach that demonstrated a positive relationship with

course performance on standard examination questions in the schools, colleges and

universities. These results taken as a whole suggest that study habit skills have a

significant relationship with student performance but the nature of this relationship is

likely to be more complicated than in some other studies.

Definitions of Study Habits

Many researchers had an interest on study habits to find out ways of different study

style. Among these scholars are, Mace (2002) indicated that study is a systematic

acquisition of knowledge and an understanding of facts and principles that calls for

retention and application. Kelly (1998) stated that study is the application of one's

mental capacity to acquire knowledge, understanding and practice. It often involves

some form of formal learning. Crow and Crow in Okorodudu (2000) have also

explained that study is a program of subject matter mastery.

However, study involves the individual's thinking, feeling, personality, social

interaction, physical activities and health rather than men. Those who belong to the

school of thought say that study is not only applicable to academic work, Olatubosun

in Oladele (2000) explained that a lecturer is studying when he examines the results of

an experiment, a lawyer when he prepares his case, a salesman when he learns about

his product and a citizen when he tries to understand the issues in an upcoming

election. Studies require time to spend in a deliberate attempt to learn.

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According to the learners Dictionary study is defined as a “mental effort to obtain

knowledge “. This means that studying is an art of learning which helps the individual

not only to acquire knowledge but also the skill and the habit to study. Narramore

(1974) defined that habit as “a pattern of activity which, through repetition, has been

learned to the point that it has become automatic and can be carried on with a

minimum of conscious effect”. In other words, Study habits are the ways that you

study - the habits that you have formed during your school years. Study habits can be

good ones, or bad ones. Good study habits include being organized, keeping good

notes, reading your textbook, listening in class, and working every day.

However, in our knowledge so far no one has done on comparative study habit on

MBA full time and part time students at GSM, IIUM. The researcher will be

examining the similarities in the study habits among these selected groups. Although

there are many factors that have an impact on study habits such as family background,

place of study, facilities, materials, mode of study and many others but we have

selected the most crucial ones to be studied in this project paper.

These factors are time management, class attendance & participation and exam

preparation. Each of these factors is intended to measure student’s study style in eight

statements. The concepts and definition of factors are explained briefly in the

literature review parts of this term paper.

Problem Statement

Graduate School of Management provides three important programs which are DBA,

MBA program and MOM program that encompasses for both type of study status to

local and overseas students in International Islamic University. Part time students are

those who working and at the study as a part mode in this program while full time

students are only free to study in their enrolled courses. There is a notion that says

part timers can do better than full time students in their studies because they have

work experience while others say that full timers can do better than part timers

because they have an ample time to study and focus the courses. Therefore, the focal

point of our research problem is to compare the difference of study habits between

MBA full time and part time students in GSM.

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Research Questions

The objective of this study is to investigate whether there is any difference between

MBA Full-time & Part-time students in GSM in terms of study habits, more

specifically:

Is there a difference between MBA full time and part time students’ study

habits in time management?

Is there a difference between MBA full time and part time students’ study

habits in Class Attendances and Participation?

Is there a difference between MBA full time and part time students’ study

habits in Exam Preparation?

Hypothesis of the Study

There is difference between MBA full time and part time students’ study

habits in time management.

There is difference between MBA full time and part time students’ study

habits in Class Attendances and Participation.

There is difference between MBA full time and part time students’ study

habits in Exam Preparation.

Significance of the Study

The significance of this study is to help us understand the components of project

proposal and be familiar with review of past studies. The project group will

understand more on the research process, how to construct problem statement,

research question, conducting literature review and organizing the research paper as

well as producing a well written project proposal in this particular paper. The other

significance issue in this paper is its uniqueness and more focus on study habits of

students in this particular business unit of strategy (BUS) which is known as a GSM.

The finding of this research will useful to the researcher at first place who conducts

this study and keen to find out these study habit differences. It is also will useful for

both MBA full time and part time students to see their way study habits as paper will

suggest some feedbacks and recommendation from the study. Similarly, it will be

valuable for the future researchers who will like to similar study on life style study in

Kulliyyah or university level with large sample size.

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Limitation and Future Study

There will be a time limitation for doing this research. Doing like this research needs

a sufficient time to cover all necessary elements and some amount of money to use

during preparing questionnaires, printing and distributing as well as some gifts to

honor the potential respondents to help us providing constructive response. Therefore,

we recommend other researchers to increase the sample size of the study by include

all economic postgraduate full time and part time students or the entire IIUM students.

The organization of first part of this project is grouped as a background of the study

which consist introductions, problem statement, research questions, hypothesis of the

study, significance of the study and limitation & future study. The second part of this

paper is review of the past studies on study habits, skills and strategy of life style

study. The last part of this study is methods of the research which is to determine

research design and tools of data collection.

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Chapter two: Literature review

Introduction

A number of studies have been made on different study habits among learners in the

past years and scholars continue to investigate factors that have an impact on the life

style study in different communities. Experts agreed that good study habit and

consistent practices of the lessons contribute a great success in the field of knowledge.

Like any other activity, skills and dedications are the key points for learning how to

success in the study journey. According to Azikiwe (1998) study habits are the

adopted way and manner, when a student plans his/her private readings, after

classroom learning, his/her aim is to manage that special course in a good manner.

Previous Studies and Theories

According to Crow & Crow (1992), the effective habits of study included good

planning and suitable places to study such students’ rooms, libraries and other

relevant materials as well as having well-restricted time table and schedule for the

study during the whole semester. To study successfully, a student must decide what

information is important and how to extract concepts from the text books and course

materials. All these things must be done to the best of ability in the shortest possible

span of time. Knowledge is very important to every person; hence it is wise to learn

how to study in the most effective way.

According to Azikiwe (1998) described that the good study skills are good asset to

all learners because these skills are helpful for students to attain mastery in areas of

specialization and consequent excellent performance, while the opposite constitute

constraints to learning and achievement leading to failure. Sorenson (1991), while

outlining the good basic study habits stated that one must study with the primary

intention of understanding. This requires one not to be hurry in getting through

instead sustained concentration is necessary.

Being a good student is not born and can be learnt and acquired in the learning

process. It needs more efforts and tolerance as well as constant and deliberate practice

of good study habits and there is no substitute for this as (Ames & Archer, 1988)

narrated. Thus, in order to improve academic performance of students, it seems

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essential to improve their study habits without which desired outcomes cannot be

achieved. Development of good study habits in children depends upon the combined

efforts of parents and teachers (Kizlik, 2001). A measuring an academic performance

is a complex behavior and underlies several abilities, e.g., memory, previous

knowledge or aptitude as well as psychological factors such as motivation, interests,

temperaments or emotions. To name a few (Deary, Whiteman, Starr, Whalley, & Fox,

2004) Educational psychologists and researchers have argued that there are many

determinants of academic performance (Chamorro-Permuzic & Furnham, 2003).

This paper focuses things about the study habits, a project group decided to undertake

and study on MBA full time and part time study habits based on specific factors.

These factors are included time management, class attendance & participation, and

exam preparation of the periods of exams. The gist of literature review will be guided

by following sub-topics followed by conceptual frame work of the study.

Time Management

The phenomenon of time management initially has appeared in the McCay’s book

which was titled ‘The Management of Time’ (McCay, 1959) model of time

management has suggested the efficiency use and the effective way in order to

monitor a manager’s use of the frame time. It was also seen as way of certainty that a

manager should spend his or her time on a certain activity that is in line with the

business goals. In the recent decades also, it has been recognized the importance of

managers’ time as being a critical factor in the success of their daily and strategic

executives.

However, a number of authors have interestingly discussed the need for better

including time in theoretical models and research designs. Whereby, other authors

have focused on the ways in which people in organizations tend to manage their time.

In this proposal in particular, we will review some definitions of time management,

and we will discuss also some methods for studying time management and how time

management can influence on the study habit.

McCay, as the first author on this area, he has developed a concept for a time

management training program, which is still being used by many organizations.

Critical elements while discussing about time management efficiency are; giving

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approaching into time consuming activities, changing time spending, and increasing

work day efficiency by teaching people how to make a daily planning, how to

prioritize tasks, and how to handle circumstances. In this regard, many books and

articles have been written to suggest similar ideas to managers, promising them a

greater effectiveness while using less time.

Over the past years, the focus of time management publications and training courses

has moved from managers as the major target group to broad viewers of working

people. As (Brigitte J.C. Claessens, A review of the time management literature,

2007) defined the term “time management” that it is actually misleading which means

it is invisible subject. Strictly speaking, time cannot be managed as other resources,

because it is an inaccessible factor. It is about only the way that mankind tends to deal

with time can be influenced.

Time management can be viewed as a way of monitoring and controlling time. In this

respect, it would be more appropriate to speak about self-management as an

interrelated aspect with regard to the performance of multiple tasks within a certain

time period. But in the literature, the term self-management has a different meaning. It

refers to monitoring and regulating oneself, but without any specific reference to

techniques for monitoring time use. Therefore, we will attach to the use of the term

time management in our proposal.

Nowadays, time management was emphasized more in the education industry, (Paul

Barron, 2008) the workplace was regarded as the only context in which time

management was practiced so that production line in certain companies may be

enough efficient. There was study that was conducted on time management skills

among 143 undergraduate business students. The results were used to develop

monitoring tools to assess students’ effective use of time and the variables that

affected their habit of study. However, specific student groups have their own needs

and issues when managing their time. For instance, mature students may be used to

managing their time independently but may also have more commitments to manage.

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Theories and practices of Time Management

It is interesting to note that, many authors have attempted to break down the theory

and practices on time management to almost four generations. The first generation is

characterized by notes and listing options. The second stage is characterized by

calendars, appointment books and emphasis on the need to plan for the future. The

third generation is about planning, organizing and controlling and the setting of long

and medium term goals. The fourth generation, which is the subject of the book, is

about the ‘First Things Firs’. This means that many challenges should face to the

readers to prioritize the timely activity basis.

By the 1990’s, when some authors highlighted time management, as a self

improvement method, it was definitely established its call to both managers and

employees. The definition of time management depends upon the interpretation of

each person considering the four generations that is mentioned. Some people define

time management as being able to do the most things in a short period of time. There

is somehow truth in this argument, but not all truth is in this definition of time

management. However, with regard the person himself, time managing concept

applies on how far there is capability to avoid time wasters by the time manager.

Besides this definition, there are other people who would define time management as

being able to do the most important things first. This could be interpreted that time

managing lies in prioritizing the tasks. However, this is not the total definition of time

management

Overall, the definition of time management should change for each person who does it

efficiently. But there are some determinants that directly affect on the time

management. These are the goal setting; planning; decision making and prioritizing

the timely basis activities. In this regard; (Covey, 1991) has mentioned about the

challenge of time management which is to balance human commitments with the

personal needs, the most two aspects that have been seen in our review, where to

gaining certain skills and usable methods, to manage time effectively, a person needs

certain skills, for instance, efficiency to identify and list tasks as methods in order to

recognize and remember the tasks that will be used in the time managing.

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Time management is characterized as interrelated method to the setting goals

philosophy, where the goals that are set by the time manager, should determine the

accuracy of the time assigning. However, while setting goals people should consider

these four criteria; specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable, and the time bounder.

By having these smart goals and sufficient plans, the managing over the process goals

will be easier. Habits of study should be based on how the goals, plans and the

activities are formulated so that the time manager could avoid from the time wasters.

Class attendance and participation

Most of universities, colleges and schools have emphasized the class attendances and

participation and encourages professors to allocate marks from 5% to 10% as course

assessments. To be successful and excellent, students more or less depends on regular

attendance of the class and to active participant. The educational institution has set up

some policies regarding absenteeism in the class. Some of them declared in the course

description that all students should not miss more than five classes in the whole

semester, if so happen they will not be allowed to sit in the final exam and they will

be given a barring letter one week before the final exam. This will lead to them to take

the course again and spent more time, energy and money in the next semester. To

avoid this kind of trouble, universities, colleges and schools come up a policy to help

students reach their aims and objectives but their commitment is highly appreciated.

Class Attendances

Class attendance is to attend all classes regularly. The main issue of this policy is to

facilitate academic learning and increase the comprehension of students in the each

subject. Students should have come to class before the lecturer to grasp the gist of

every introductory party of the chapter so that it will be easy for them to recall during

mid-exam and the final exam as well. Sometimes, professors go beyond the course

materials and explain much about the subject matter and he later include in the exam

to see whether students are conscious and have ability to capture the main point of the

lecture. Missing one class results lose a substantial amount of information and

discussion that will affect in the final grade of the semester.

A plenty of research investigated the relationship between class attendance and

student grades. For example, (Malcolm, 1996) has distributed 140 questionnaires to

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the undergraduate students in college classes and data showed a significant correlation

between class attendance and final grade performance in the course. Similarly,

another study was done by (Davenport, 1990) at Broom Community College located

in New York banned its attendance policy in 7 years periods. In those periods, the

attendance rate and grade point averages of students at the college had been dropping.

This study done by (Davenport, 1990) and conducted a research with 78 students’

enrolled three sections of business law course to determine whether there is

relationship between attendance designs and final grades in the final exams. Their

Data was used Chi Square tests to analyze data an the analysis revealed that there was

statistically significant positive correlation between poor attendance and law grades in

the final assessment and the study recommended the Broom Community College to

re-implement the attendance policy to improve the performance of the students.

The importance of class attendances is being highlighted in many different working

and researches. One of among these studies is conducted by (Tsu-Ming, 2011)

investigated the relationship between student’s attendance class and their overall

grades in the multiple computer science course. They found that there is strong

correlation in the attendance of the first class and overall student’s grade in the final

evaluation. The literature review in the past on class attendance gives clear evidence

that attendance is strongly associated with grades as meta-analytic results done by

(Marcus Credé, 2010) showed.

There are motivating factors that let students to attend the class regularly. Among

motivators are allocating marks to the class attendance, existence of attendance

policy, lecture’s encouragement, curiousness and overall motivation to learn and

having ambition to be excellent in the class and overall program. There are some

exceptions of missing classes and some of common exceptions are as follows:

Student’s’ health problems that requires to come up with medial certificate

Death of the family members where students feel gloomy and busy with the

funeral event

Involving accidents and injuries along the way to the school, college or

university

Involving curriculum activity events, workshops, seminars related to the

course most organized by the university.

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Class Participation

Class participation is involve actively answering the questions raised by the

professors and gives your constructive opinions and comments as well as sometimes

asking questions where necessary and relevant to the discussion at hand. In the class

discussion, everyone’s perspective is necessary and contributive to the course

comprehension. Class participation concept was considered to be one of the

performance indicators in the students’ grading and some research showed that some

professors suggest that they determine active students from participating class

activities.

In reference to study of (Herrington, 2006) highlighted that students will be required

to actively participate in the subject they enrolled. Class participation includes

contribution to class discussion including questions, comments, reflection, sharing

experiences and feelings, and feedback on case study presentations in the class.

Participation of the course cannot be only in the classroom discussion but also can be

online discussion forum through yahoo group or any other online discussion forum to

encourage shy students to participate in the subject discussion either by posing

questions, making comments or observations that contribute to the learning process.

Students that attend all classes and actively participate will be awarded 5% of marks

for instance but those who miss one or two classes but are still actively involved will

be awarded 4% or fewer marks.

Although it is difficult to measure and interpret student’s behavior, talent in class

participation and it is also tough to encourage shy students to participate class

discussions but still it matters to adopt and make the class active and interesting. In

addition, grading class participation matters most in academic performance and sends

a positive gestures to students to think critically and being active learners as well as

developing listening and speaking skills that are help them later in the career

development. In research conducted by (Eison, 1990) revealed when students see that

their participation is being graded frequently and consistently, they adjust their study

habit accordingly to become active participators and improve their learning skills.

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John and Peterson are professor and assistant professor at Seattle University in U.S

respectively. They develop different attendance and class participation policy to

facilitate and improve learning style habits. Some of the common ways that they have

highlighted in their course description and used to encourage students to participate in

the class discussions are as follows:

The first most common participatory classroom used in the academic studies is what

we might call open class discussion. Wherein the instructor poses questions aimed at

drawing all class members into conversation. To facilitate whole-class discussion, the

instructor might request a U-shaped case classroom, move chairs into a horseshoe or

circle, or otherwise adjust space so that students can address each other without

passing all commentary through the instructor (Welty 1989).

The second mode of class participating that is common among professors is to call

students according to their class list. This happens when professor poses a question

and then calls on students at random to formulate their answers. In assessing student

responses, many professors take into account the difficulty level of the question

posed, often using taxonomy such as that of Bloom (1956) whereas the open-

discussion professor tends to value any kind of question or response from students.

The last but not least common ways to make the class active is to employ

collaborative learning, in which students work in small groups toward a consensus

solution of problems designed by the instructor and then report their solutions in a

plenary session. Differences among group solutions often lead to whole-class

discussions during the plenary session (Bruffee, 1993).

Exam Preparations

Examination is stet of written or oral questions that are intended to test learner’s

knowledge, skills and talent on the subject matter. Examinations and test are set by

schools, colleges and universities to assess student’s capability to recall what he or

she was taught in the class and it serves for variety purpose. For example, if students

know they will be having test or exam in the middle of the semester or at the end of

the term, they will study hard and devote some amount of time and energy to

understand the subject. Thus, exams are seen as a instrument to assess learning and

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self-development process. Students have different style of studying and different way

of preparing the exam.

Although some people believe that exam causes some problems such as anxiety, more

fear, stressful in mind and anger but still serves as a tool of evaluation student’s

performance in the academic fields. As natural, when students are tested on their

courses, there are three criteria that they fall in such as excellent, good and poor in

their performance. This performance depends on how they are genius and level of

preparation for the exam. According to study done by the American Council on

Education in 2010 in U.S, they have studied why student at institutions not

performing well in their exams and they have identified four primary reasons that let

students fail in their assessments such as 1) taking wrong course, 2) inadequate

preparation for the exam 3) failure to understand well the exam questions, 4)

managing exam time.

In this part of paper, the main focus is to identify how adequate preparation helps

students to become high achievers in their studies. According to several studies shown

in their analysis and explore wide variety of exam preparation style, there no one

single exam preparation style to be recommended but some sort of strategies that

worked best and assumed to useful in the future are mentioned in those studies.

As usual, some students will like to study gradually during whole term immediately

after the lecture while others prefer to study when exam nears specially last minutes

and they do cramming by studying hastily for impending examinations. The first one

is more likely to perform well. In addition, some students prefer to study along and

concentrate their own materials while some other wishes to study with group and

share the ideas as well as helping each other. Moreover, there is another group of

students who rely on memorization and not trying to understand the concept for the

course enrolled. This type of students may not score in the exam because they may

forget some of details for course components.

There are three stages of exam preparations which are before, during and after exam.

Before exam you need to attend lectures, tutorials and workshops as well as taking

notes during the class and making note after the class. This will help to comprehend

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easily and recall in the final exam. During the exam, you need to review your notes

briefly, have a slight nutritious breakfast, have enough sleep at night, pay attention to

all instruction, review all question and start the one you know better and then so on.

After the exam, you need to compare your expectation with actual performance.

Discover what went well and what went wrong and check how far your preparation is

successful what areas will need to improve in the future.

In brief, exam preparation is a vital to success and pass in academic examination.

Despite many factors, students should be familiar and adopt some strategies for exam

preparation by setting schedule, being proactive and avoiding procrastination.

Students should any interruption during exam preparation.

Theoretical Framework of the study

Figure 1: Conceptual framework

Time management

Class participation

Exam preparation

Factors Affecting

Study Habits

Study

Habits Higher

Performance

Low

Performance -Ve

+Ve

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Chapter three: Research Methodology

Methods and Data Collection

The study of this project paper was based on survey that will be collected from Master

of Business Administration (MBA) from both full time and part time students enrolled

at graduate School of Management (GSM) at International Islamic University

Malaysia. The instrument used to gather data is questionnaire that will develop and

designed and will be administered to the potential respondents. Qualitative research

will be used to conduct the research that attempts precisely to measure the interested

elements of the research. It usually measures the behavior of respondents, their

knowledge, their opinion and their attitude as well.

Sampling and sample size

Since the purpose of inferential statistics is to find something about the population,

sample is a portion of the population of interest and more feasible than studying the

whole population. The group will decide to use sampling method due to the following

reasons:

Studying the entire population will be more time consuming

The cost of studying all items in the population will be very high and cannot

affordable

To count the entire population exactly is feasible

The sample are representing the population and results are accurate and

precise

The size of sample should be more than 60 students for both samples of MBA full

time and part time students at GSM and should be randomly selected from these

students. We anticipate 40 respondents from each group so that the total will be 80

respondents.

Data Analysis

The statistical tools used in this project will be SPSS of version 20 to analyze the data

and come up with result. Self-administered questionnaire will be distributed to the

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potential respondents who are MBA full time and part time students at GSM. All data

will be collected carefully to avoid missing and not returned questionnaires, this

questionnaire will be consisted of four parts namely demographics, time management,

class attendance and participation as well as exam preparation, and each part has eight

items that measures study habits among full time and part time students at GSM.

The research will use the measurement Likert scale that was developed by Rensis

Likert. This measurement scale is the most frequently used variation of the summated

rating scale. It consists statements that expresses either favorable or unfavorable. In

this paper, participants will be asked to agree or disagree with each statement from 1

to 5 scales that measures study habits as a whole and particularly in specific factors.

The first part, from Question1 to 8, they will be asked to express how they set their

study schedule for the course without interruption and come up with effective time

management schedule. Second, we will be measuring the level of attending class and

their participation in the class discussion from Q9 to 16. Thirdly, the intensity of exam

preparation will be also measuring from Q17 to 24 to see whether they are preparing

in the same way or not.

Reliability & Validity

Validity refers to how well a test measures to what it is purported to measure. While

reliability is the degree to which an assessment tool produces stable and consistent

results.

Internal validity refers to how well an experiment is done, especially whether it avoids

confounding. The less chance for confounding in a study, the higher its internal

validity is.

External validity is the extent to which your results apply to

populations/situations/times/environments different from those in your experiment.

External validity refers to how well data and theories from one.

According to the validity of this research, we are going to formulate a questionnaire

applicable in order to get relevant information about the factors influencing students

performance. Also we will do a survey and we will choose a probabilistic random

sampling in order to be a good representative sample that will be more reliable and

valid.

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Conclusion and Recommendation

The study will investigate study habit on MBA full time and part time students at

GSM who enrolled this program. Three factors such as time management, class

attendance and exam preparation will be examined. Students will be asked eight items

under each factor to measure whether they have study habit similarities or not. The

proposed hypothesis of the study is that MBA full time and part time have almost the

same study habit in terms of Time Management and Class Attendance & Participation

and exam Preparation but however, there may be slight difference with regards to one

of the measured items where by MBA full time students may have higher mean scores

compared to part time students. Another possible finding is that most of MBA

students at GSM have more than 7 years of work experience. Thus, we recommend

that MBA full students can work while they are studying at the same time since there

will not be much significant difference among their study habits.

21

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Tsu-Ming, J.-F. a. (2011). Correlation between Class Attendances and Grades.

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