To Study the Effect of Academic Achievement on the Level of Self Confidence

INTRODUCTIONSelf-confidence is an attitude which allows individuals to have positive yet realistic views of themselves and their situations. Self-confident people trust their own abilities, have a general sense of control in their lives, and believe that, within reason, they will be able to do what they wish, plan, and expect. Having self-confidence does not mean that individuals will be able to do everything. Self-confident people have expectations that are realistic. Even when some of their expectations are not met, they continue to be positive and to accept themselves.Self-confidence is not necessarily a general characteristic which pervades all aspects of a person's life. Typically, individuals will have some areas of their lives where they feel quite confident, e.g., academics, athletics, while at the same time they do not feel at all confident in other areas, e.g., personal appearance, social relationships.Self confidence is a belief in yourself and your abilities, a mental attitude of trusting or relying on yourself. Confidence is sometimes equated with freedom from doubt; however when confidence is needed is usually when the outcome is uncertain, so that true confidence is actually about feeling comfortable with uncertainty and not knowing what the outcome will be.So it can conclude that Self-confidence is the expected probability that a person will achieve a goal in a certain situation. For example if mark estimates that his probability of achieving an "A" on a calculus exam is 90%, we would conclude that mark had high self-confidence in his ability to do well on a calculus exam. If Mark had estimated 10%, then it would say that the person had low self-confidence about his ability to do well on the exam.REVIEW OF LITERATUREDuring the past decades various studies, researches works have been done on the academic achievement. Following is an epitome of these research works:Augustsson and Engstand (2001) examined of whether there are any long-term differences in academic achievements between children with and without observed or treated middle ear disease in a population with a stable long-standing treatment policy. A birth cohort of 2156 children was previously studied through a questionnaire to the parents at 4 years of age, follow-up after audiometric screening at 4, 7,11 and 14 years of age, and study of records from all Ear, Nose and Throats departments in the area; 2095 of these still lived in the area and received academic grades on leaving the ninth year of the state school system. We have compared these grades, and the choice of high school course for children with different experiences of otitis media. A history of treatment for bilateral secretory otitis media was correlated to minor group difference in the mean of grades, but not to any significant difference in the individual grades or in the choice of further studies. Having many episodes of acute otitis before the age of four was uncorrelated to lower grades and to less tendency to continue with theoretical studies. No harmful effect of middle ear disease could be shown in a large sample, suggesting that Swedish children do not suffer long-term effects on learning from otitis media.Hampton and Mason (2003) examined the impact of gender, learning disability (LD) status, and sources of efficacy on self-efficacy beliefs and academic achievement in the concept of Bandura's self-efficacy theory. Two hundred and seventy-eight high school students participated in the study. Structural equation modeling was used. The results revealed that LD status had indirect influence on self-efficacy via the source variable; gender did not have direct or indirect influences on self-efficacy; sources of efficacy had direct impact on self-efficacy, which in turn affected academic performance. The structural model fit the data well and explained 55% of the variance in academic achievement.Rafferty, Shinn and Weitzman (2004) examined the school experiences and academic achievement of 46 adolescents in families who experienced homelessness and 87 permanently housed adolescents whose families received public assistance. …