Effect of Insecure environment on the academic performance of female students in Pakistan

The study investigated the effect of an insecure city environment on the academic performance of female college students in Pakistan. Although studies are found in the insecure environment inside the institute, none investigated the insecure environment on the ways from home to college. This research specifically targeted female students of the Age from 14 to 16 years who walked to their colleges and often experience unusual activities or harassment affecting their academic performance.100 Females who were studying in the Government institutes, were the desired sample of the current study who were studying at the government colleges and were students of 1 year. The result indicated that an insecure city environment is a significant negative predictor of academic performance among female college students who are attending Government colleges in Pakistan (β= -.81, p < .001). The findings drawn from this study are likely to help save the young female students from developing insecure feelings while moving on the road alone. This research helps in providing a secure environment for the female to ensure their optimized learning. This is ascertained through a better future by instigating some action planning for providing the females with a safe environment that promotes effective learning.


INTRODUCTION
Globally, the significance of education has been sufficiently established (Ojukwu, 2016). However, a vacuum, in the development of a conducive learning environment, and aim of education is unlikely to be accomplished (Lehr, 2004;Monsen & Frederickson, 2004). These aims could be achieved only by having a peaceful and comfortable school environment as well as the societal circumstances. In case of any insecure feeling with regards to the internal or external environment of the school, it could be much deterred for students and teachers to work properly in such an environment. Previous studies have hinted that the feeling of an insecure environment may affect the students' academic performance. Further, it has been demonstrated that the college environment issues are of multiple dimensions which include physical fears, social fears as well as academic fears. The dimension of physical fears include school outlook and internal building, playgrounds, libraries, etc., whereas social dimensions include the quality of the interpersonal relationships at different levels, for instance, the quality of student-teacher relationship as well as the relationship among teachers, students, and administrators, teachers' and administration's fair treatment towards students, competition, and contribution of students as well as teachers to the decision making the process of the school (Miller & Cunningham, 2011). The academics elements of the school environment incorporate the nature of guidance given to the students and the instructor's desire for good accomplishments by the students (Miller & Cunningham, 2011;Mujahidah et al., 2019). According to Glew et al. (2005), the school environment or atmosphere alludes to how students and staff feel about being at school every day. It could be imagined as settings in which youngsters feel familiar and develop a feeling of participation and commit-ment to a gathering. In such environments and atmospheres, this study expects that individuals will be increasingly worried about the difficulties of the students and progressively slanted to prevent them from taking part in behaviours that may imperil themselves or others. In this regard, it was stated by McEvoy and Welker (2000) that sentiments of trust and relationship between students and instructors impacted the school environment enhances producing negative student behaviour and scholarly execution. This requires a changing school atmosphere (Glew et al., 2005). Afshar et al. (2020) stated that a feeling of competency is likely to develop in an environment that is reasonable and predictable, which will aid in academics. Moreover, Way et al. (2007) indicated that for the feeling of having a place, the school atmosphere must exhibit enthusiasm for singular students and incorporate enthusiastic help by instructors and different students. Experimental investigations of Wang and Holcombe (2010) recommended that students' impression of scholarly help, behaviour the executives, educator social help, and companion social help are emphatically connected with their behavioural change. Kuperminc et al. (2001) stated that academic help by the school emphasis a steady learning environment with massive scholarly desires and numerous open doors for support. Wang and Holcombe (2010) argued that students who see solid scholarly help in school are bound to have fewer behavioural issues. Then again, McEvoy and Welker (2000) stated students who experience repeated dissatisfaction in academics are less disposed to see their school as academically strong and may diminish their duty to student's jobs and their inspiration to perform well and increment school issue behaviour. According to Kuperminc et al. (2001), contemplation regarding the behaviour of the board of students in state-funded schools has been demonstrated to be related to a lower level of behaviour issue. School behaviour includes the degree to which the school gives clear and steady standards and control, and grown-ups treat students reasonably and impartially. Griffith (1997) argued that students who report that their schools set up, impart, and implement a reasonable control framework with clear guidelines and outcomes. This leads to fewer behaviour issues and diminishes prospects related to student exploitation.
Generally, the nature of relational connections in the school includes student-instructor connections and friendly relationships, which aid in the increase of the student's issue behaviours and scholarly execution. Students who see that instructors are strong, responsive, and care about them have better scholarly execution and fewer behavioural issues (Wang & Holcombe, 2010). It bodes well to express that the school environment where the circumstances above are certain may affect decidedly on the scholarly exhibition of the students and the other way around. Speculatively, in this manner, the above environment will positively affect the exhibition of students in schools (Ojukwu & Chigozirim, 2015). In any case, one of the significant issues that appear to trouble students, guardians, and partners in Nigeria today is the academics execution of the students. As indicated by Fehintola (2009), poor scholarly execution of students concerning inward and outer assessments is one of the issues and difficulties confronting the instructive framework in Nigeria. The instruction itself causes people to adjust to another environment (Ojukwu, 2016). In Nigeria, training is viewed as one of the methods for finding a workable pace progressive system. In this way, poor academics execution, for the most part, realizes pity and disappointment to the individual concerned and his/her folks' just as different individuals from the family. Truly, it provides guardians and students with the feeling of contentment and satisfaction when youngsters exceed expectations academically (Fehintola, 2009;Ojukwu, 2016).
Scholarly execution involves that students are required to keep up a palatable academics record and meet the commitments of the courses they are enlisted (Ojukwu & Chigozirim, 2015). Scholarly execution is the result of training, the degree to which students accomplished the instructive objectives. Put in another manner, great scholarly execution is the individual comportment and responsibility of the students to complete his/her academics purposes which may incorporate focusing on one's examinations, having the certainty to progress arranged academics exercises in school thus in other to maximally realize his life vocation or dream (Olofintoye, 2008). Positive or negative academics execution can make or blemish the objectives of a students' life similar to that of the national objectives and advancement. A decent scholarly presentation would instigate inspiration and excitement in the students to accomplish high academic standing as compared to his/her mates. It achieves flexibility and ensures a high achievement of the students' (Morgans, 2002). The exhibition of Imo State Secondary School students in outside assessments, for example, the Senior Secondary School Certificate directed by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and National Examination Council (NECO) seems, by all accounts, to be poor, which neglect the meeting of the basic learning necessary for obtaining essential abilities and fitness. Poor scholarly execution is by all accounts the request for the day as reflected in the students' assessments. For instance, the SSCE'S result for 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 uncovers that solitary 24.94%, 30.99%, 25.99%, 29.27% and 31.28% individually of the competitors who sat for the assessments acquired five credits including Mathematics and English language necessary for the entrance into the Nigerian Universities. Students' poor scholarly exhibition has for a while credited to educators' inadequacy, the poor insightful remainder of the students, and poor their mental readiness, with less or no reference to the impact of uncertainty of the school environment and its related elements. However, teachers and clinicians have understood that numerous students perform ineffectively in their academic work, not because they do not have the psychological capacity to progress nicely, but they might have been influenced by the uncertain school environment. In this line, Ojukwu and Chigozirim (2015) just as Ojukwu and Onuoha (2016) have detailed affected students' behaviour and their psychosocial alteration separately. The idea of weakness suggests the state or nature of being shaky. Security in basic terms implies insurance of lives and properties from demolition. As indicated by Olofintoye (2008), securities are the dynamic conditions that include the overall capacity of a state to counter dangers to its fundamental beliefs and ensure the necessary actions for the safety of the residents. Furthermore, sharing the view Maslow (2008), andIyengar (1977) express-ed that an uncertain individual sees the world as a hazardous wilderness, feels perilous, despondent, dismissed, antagonistic, and negative, gives an indication of pressure, struggle and blame, and will, in general, be psychotic and by and large egocentric. It accordingly appears that when a student is examined in an environment that is portrayed by instability, the students may endure socially, intellectually, and sincerely and it bodes well speculatively to express that it may influence his behavior and psychosocial modification as well as his academic performance. Ojukwu and Chigozirim (2015) notice that an uncertain school environment, including weatherbeaten conditions and instructors' negative disposition to approve and acknowledge the enthusiastic needs of students. This might prompt undue impacts and conflicts of a neighbourhood network meddling with school practices. Likewise, they expressed that in unreliable school surroundings, students are vulnerable to the mental issues as their cognitive needs are never met or thoughtlessly dealt with, with consistent isolations in the school network along with religions, inborn and based outlines. As a result of it, students may disregard educators' orders and likewise challenge the instructors on specific ideas, where the school properties might almost certainly be intentionally harmed by the students to show their objection to administration choices (Ojukwu & Chigozirim, 2015). Likewise, Ojukwu and Chigozirim (2015) detailed that in a school environment described by fragility, the delay is the standard in school, and students are permitted to utilize handsets and telephones unreservedly. Every year, the outer consequences of the school are in every case awful because of the poor, encouraging atmosphere of the school as appeared in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. Different examples of the uncertainty of the school environment incorporate that occasionally female staff and students complain of being assaulted or impregnated, prompting school dropouts (Ojukwu & Chigozirim, 2015). Likewise, guardians complain that their youngsters are harassed and harmed, and the classrooms are packed, inadequately ventilated, and lit (Ghazi et al., 2013). Again the negative impact of the above-painted variables may encourage low academic performance. As a result, understanding the negative impact of the frailty of the city environment and eventually, the academic performance of the optional school students has become critical. Therefore, the literature mentioned above provides insights related to the insecure environment inside the school; however, none has investigated the insecure environment concerning the path from home to school for the secondary female students. This current research is in the continuance of the previous studies, aimed at providing insightful and comprehensive findings for developing the research horizon. The results are assumed to offer potential clarifications to the dominant and distressing academic difficulties which affect the academic performance of the female students in Pakistan.
The study investigates the effect of an insecure city environment on the academic performance of female's college students in Pakistan. The major objectives of the study were to predict the effect of an insecure city environment on the academic performance of female college students in Pakistan.

Hypotheses
H1: Is an insecure city environment a predictor of academic performance of female college students in Pakistan? Research, 3 (1), 2020

METHOD
For the relationship exploration between the insecure city environment and academic performance of female students among the female colleges, this survey-based study was performed.

Study design
The crossectional research design was used to discover the association between the stated research variables. This research design was used to predict a relationship between an insecure city environment and academic performance among female college students of Pakistan enrolled in government colleges.

Study Setting
The current study was done in public female's colleges in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan.

Sample
Females were the desired sample of the current study, given their direct exposure to the stated research problem. Thereby, the sample recruited comprises of females who were studying at the female colleges and were enrolled in 1st grade. The participation of the students was voluntary from the students, who participated in the research willingly.

Sample size
The sample size was 100 female students enrolled in 1st grade at Government Colleges in Punjab, Pakistan.

Sampling technique
Nonprobability convenient sampling was used to collect data.

Instruments
First of all, for data collection, a questionnaire booklet was designed. It consisted of demographic information that covered Age and marks percentage in the Pre 1 st grade exam for the promotion to the regular 1 st -grade class. Following it, an already developed scale, named "Effect of insecurity of the school environment on academic performance" was adopted and implemented (Ojukwu., 2017). Also, it was modified to fulfil the objectives of the current study. The name of that modified questionnaire was Scale for the Insecure City Environment (SICE).
Scale for the insecure city environment: This self-modified scale consisted of 20 items rated on 5 points Likert scale from 1 to 5, where one means strongly disagree, and five means strongly agree. The score ranges from 20-100, and scoring was done by adding all the responses. If the score is more towards 100, higher will be the feeling of insecurity among the students regarding their ways to Percentage of no. of siblings school. The reliability of data was analyzed by Cronbach's alpha value that was 78, and validity was .68.

Demographic information
The primary Age of female college students who are attending Government institute in Pakistan was 14.94 with a standard deviation of .763. Three age groups were found according to years, i.e., 14 years' old students (32%) and 15 years old students (42%) and 16 years old students (26%).

Procedure
The designed questionnaire booklet was submitted to the head of Government schools for seeking permission for data collection. The principals of the Government schools allowed the researcher to collect data while engaging a teacher for taking the researcher to the classrooms and introducing her. After explaining the study purpose to the students, the researcher asked for voluntary participation and recorded their responses in the questionnaire booklet. All the participants signed the consent form before distributing and filling the questionnaire.

Data management and analysis plan
In IBM SPSS 20.0 version, the researcher entered the real data. Missing values were catered, and outliers were removed. After data screening and data cleaning, the multiple linear regression was applied to the data to find out the predictive relationship between the insecure city environment and the academic performance of secondary school female students in Pakistan. Cronbach Alpha test was used to assess the reliability of data with a significance level of 5% level (LoBiondo-Wood & Haber, 2014).

Ethical Consideration
All the participants have explained the aim and objectives of the current study as well as the rights of participants. Consent forms were signed by all the participants and were ensured by the researcher. The right of leaving study at any time was also conveyed to the participants both verbally and in written form. To ensure the anonymity of data, numeric coding was used where codes were assigned instead of their names. For confidentiality maintenance, data was kept in lock and in the researcher's laptop, which was encrypted with a biometric lock system. The researcher handled the questionnaire booklet by herself while collecting data.

Result
The results of descriptive statistics revealed that in 0 to 20 percentage category of academic performance, 18.8% students were from 14 years group which were found to be higher as compared to the 15 years group students (9.5%) and 7.7% students of age group 16 years were fall under 0 to 20 per cent category. In the 21 to 40 category of academic performance, 25% of the students were from 14 years age group, 21.4% of students were from 15 years age group, and 30.8% of students were from 16 years age group. In 41 to 60 categories of academic performance, 21.9% of the students were from 14 years age group, 33.3% of students were from 15 years age group, and 42.3% of students were from 16 years age group. In 61 to 80 per cent category of academic performance, 21.9% of the students were from 14 years age group, 31.0% of students were from 15 years age group, and 19.2% of students were from 16 years age group. In 81 to 100percent category of academic performance, 12.5% of the students were from 14 years age group, 4.8% of students were from 15 years age group, and 0.0% of students were from 16 years age group as shown in Figure 2.
Multiple linear regression was used to calculate whether an insecure city environment was is a predictor of academic performance among the secondary school female students who are attending Government secondary schools in Pakistan or not. Result of regression indicated the two predictors explained 65% of variance (R 2 = .650, F (1, 98) = 89.99, p < .001). The result indicated that an insecure city environment is a significant negative predictor of academic performance among secondary school female students who are attending Government secondary schools in Pakistan (β= -.81, p < .001) ( Table 1).

Discussion
The current study explored whether an insecure city environment is a predictor of academic performance among female college students enrolled in the government institutes in Pakistan. The findings show the acceptance of the alternate hypothesis. Thus, this study proved that in insecure societal circumstances; for instance, roadside harassment and unusual activities, etc., for school going female students is a negative predictor of academic performance. The academics elements of the school environment incorporate the nature of guidance given to the students and the instructor's desire for good accomplishments from students, as concluded by Miller and Cunningham (2011). According to Glew et al. (2005), the school environment or atmosphere alludes to how students and staff feel about being at school every day. It could be assumed that this is based on the settings which the youngsters are familiar with and experience a feeling of participation and commitment to a gathering. In such environments and atmospheres, we expect that individuals will be increasingly worried about individual students and progressively slanted to prevent them from taking part in behaviours that may imperil themselves or others. In this regard, McEvoy and Welker (2000) reasoned that sentiments of trust and concern for students and instructors impacted the school environment. Similarly, Glew et al. (2005) announced that improving students' behaviour and scholarly execution, for the most part, requires a changing school atmosphere. According to Ojukwu and Chigozirim (2015), the uncertainty of the school environment incorporates that occasionally female staff and students complain of being assaulted or impregnated, prompting school dropouts.

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the finding of this study help highlights the predictors which should be culminated for improving female student's performance in Pakistan. The drafting of plans and its execution is likely to save the young female students from developing insecure feelings while moving on the road alone for the sake a better.