EFFECT OF ACADEMIC STAFF PROMOTIONAL APPRAISAL MEASURES ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF UNIVERSITIES IN ANAMBRA STATE

Abstract

The academic performance of an institution is determined by the level of its contributions to the society which include the teaching quality, academic publications, societal contributions among others. The component area of promotional appraisal criteria for academic staff in universities is divided into two major focus which includes teaching and non-teaching appraisal measures. This study was designed to investigates the effect of academic staff promotional appraisal measures on academic performance of universities in Anambra State. A descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised all the professors and heads of units appraisal academic staff in the six universities in Anambra State. The purposive sampling technique was used in drawing 3 universities for the study, based on their year of existence and academic staff strength. A simple random sampling technique was sued to select 100 respondents each from 3 sampled universities. A total number of participants for the study were 300. Out of 300 respondents, 296 copies of questionnaire were retired and used for the study. An 11-item structured questionnaire titled “Effect of Academic Staff Promotional Appraisal Measures on Academic Performance Questionnaire” (EASPAMAPQ) was used for the study. The instrument was duly validated by two experts in the faculty of Education of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam. The reliability of the instrument was established through the Cronbach alpha statistics which yielded an index value of 0.82 and was considered adequate for the study. The instrument was administered to the 300 respondents with the help of three trained research assistant. The research questions were answered using mean scores while t-test statistics was adopted to test the hypotheses at P<0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that teaching activities appraisal of academic staff have significantly enhanced academic performance of universities in Anambra State, while non-teaching activities appraisal of academic staff was found not to have significant effect on academic performance of universities in Anambra State. The implication of these findings is that non-involvement of universities in Anambra State among the top ten universities in Nigeria is as a result of its low academic staff growth in non-teaching academic activities. The study therefore recommends among others that, university managers in Anambra State should take urgent measures to help in enhancing improved academic staff performance in non-teaching activities.