Cambodia Development Institute

[Research Competition 2013 by RUPP/Institute of Foreign Languages]

1.Research Title: Research Methodology Department of International Studies Relationship between Home Environment and Academic Achievement of University Students

2. Group (First prize)
Sovan Monyrath,
Lay Boseihak
Uy Samphallarith

3. Abstract
The main purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between reading habits and academic achievement of junior students of Department of International Studies (DIS) at Institute of Foreign Languages (IFL) at Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP). To obtain rigorous analysis of the relationship between the two variables, it is essential to seek for other three questions: (1) How often do DIS junior students spend time reading every day? (2) What sources or materials do they read per week? (3) Which predictor variables: English proficiency and reading strategies are statistically significant of students’ reading habits? It is a cross-sectional study with sample of 104 DIS junior students. After using a survey-type instrument with Likert scale responses to collect data from participants and analyzing the data by using descriptive statistics and linear regression, results show that the students spend 31mn to 60mn every day reading, online information followed by textbooks is the comparatively the most popular materials that students spend time to read in a week, English proficiency is not statistically significant predictor of reading habits, but reading strategies accounts for a statistically significant predictor of reading habits, and there is a very small positive relationship between reading habits and academic achievements.