Influence of relationship status on the academic performance of students from selected college of gangtok, Sikkim

Background: Romantic relationship is one of the development markers in adolescent’s life which involves the social, physical and emotional aspects. Being in a romantic relationship helps in determining the self-esteem, personality and functioning of an individual. Romantic relationship can exert both positive and negative affect on the outcomes of academic performance of an adolescent student. Having a romantic relationship may motivate and inspire most of the people on their endeavours. Objectives: The study aimed at assessing the influence of relationship status on academic performance of the college students. It would raise the awareness among the college students on the influence of relationship status on their academic performance. Methods: Research design adopted was non-experimental descriptive comparative survey and the tools used were demographic profile, structured likert scale for assessment of time management and level of motivation and standardized likert scale for assessing the level of anxiety. The study comprised of 300 samples which was selected using non-probability purposive sampling technique. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to interpret the data. Results: The findings of the study revealed that majority 232(77.34%) of the students were in the age group of 20-22 years and almost 192(64%) of the students were males. Mostly, 166(55.33%) were Hindu by religion and 150(50%) of the students belonged to a joint family. Most of the students 59(39.3%) had academic weight age of 50-60%, majority 117(78%) had adequate time management, which depicted that being in a romantic relationship had no effect in their time management. However, the effect of romantic relationship of the students with regard to motivation and anxiety level as revealed from the study findings shows that 82(54.6%) of the students were motivated and 139(92.6%) had moderate anxiety level. There was a statistical significant difference between academic performance of the student with respect to relationship status with t-value (8.35), mean 60.67,59 and standard deviation of 1.82 and 1.83. It was found that there was a significant association between academic weight age and the selected demographic variables such as religion (12.5, p=≤0.05) df=4 and family income (25.52,p=≤0.05) df=8. Conclusion: Based on the findings of the present study, it can be concluded that being in a romantic relationship hada positive impact on the level of motivation of students and moderate effect on the level of anxiety whereas, there was no effect on time management.