Daily Living and Study Habits and the Academic Achievement of Secondary School Students in Hong Kong

Abstract

Responses of 80 Hong Kong first-year high school girls to a test of nonverbal ability and a questionnaire about their daily living and study habits plus English-language competence scores were investigated as predictors of academic achievement in six school subjects. Only the ‘daily living habit’ and ‘study habit’ items concerning amount of homework and revision time correlated significantly with school subject grades but even these items did not improve the predictive power obtained by entering the nonverbal ability and English competence scores in the regression equation. The findings question the value of instructing girls to watch their nutrition, sleep, and time spent watching television or on the telephone.