Influence of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder on Students' Performance in Geometrical Construction in Okrika, Rivers State

Abstract

Educationally, many factors are identified as predictors of students' academic performance especially in mathematics. One such factor is attributed to the level of attention the students pay to learning a particular concept. Based on this premise, the study investigated the influence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on the performance of students in geometrical construction in Okrika, Rivers State. The analytical survey design was adopted for the study. The four objectives, four research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The population of the study consisted of all the 1365 senior secondary students from the six public coeducational senior secondary schools in Okrika Local Government Area of Rivers State. A sample of 310 senior secondary one students obtained from the population by the Taro Yamane formula was selected for the study using a simple random sampling technique. The instruments for data collection were: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Questionnaire (ADHDQ) and Construction Performance Test (CPT). Both ADHDQ and CPT were validated by three authorities in Mathematics Education to ensure that the instruments preserve their face and content validity. The test-retest method was adopted to establish the reliabilities of the instruments with reliability coefficients of 0.78 and 0.81. Simple percentage, mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test the two hypotheses at a 0.05 level of significance. The findings indicated that 29.70% of the students have ADHD out of which 52.2% are male while 47.8% are female. It was also discovered that students without ADHD performed better than students with ADHD in construction. Female students with ADHD have higher scores on construction performance tests than male students with ADHD. In view of the findings the study recommended that Mathematics teachers should utilize active learning strategies or methods for Mathematics teaching and learning to curb ADHD among students.