DISCREMINANT ANALYSIS OF GIFTED AND AVERAGE STUDENTS' PERFORMANCE IN FACULTY OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCES UNIVERSITY OF JOS

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to examine the differences in performance between gifted and average students in the Faculty of Management Sciences, University of Jos. A survey research design was adopted for this study. The total population for the study was 1,122.The Participants comprised undergraduate students in the Faculty selected based on theirresults which are reflected implicitly in their CGPAs as provided checked by their level coordinators. Multivariate analysis of variance was conducted, using General Linear Models (GLM) with SPSS 21, to find out whether the (combination of) the five factors differ between gifted and average students, which was the central position of this study. The independent variables were high reasoning ability, creativity, curiosity, large vocabulary and excellent memory, while the dependent variable is gifted. The results of the evaluation of normality, linearity and multicollinearity were satisfactory. The study recommended that gifted students are significantly different from averaged students in terms of the combined and separate variables. Therefore they need to be encouraged more in identification of their giftedness skill to continue to perform better and become reasonable students that will make the Faculty proud. The study also recommends that since the characteristics were significant on the average students they need to belong to an 'elite' group to spend more extra time on studies