Publication:

Belief about birth order and their reflection in academic performance: a cross sectional study

Background Alfred Adler in 1964 stated that different position in a family, birth order may be correlated to both positive and negative life outcomes. Children in the same family are different from each other in academic achievement and the effects of birth order one child/s educational achievement has been studied. The objective was to evaluate the relationship between birth order and their reflection in academic performance.

Methods The study design was a cross-sectional survey where data collected by a self-administered online questionnaire to gather information about students bio data, birth order, gender, age, siblings size, parents education and income. A total of 92 online questionnaire were distributed to the participants (34 male and 53 female). Out of which 88 participants were submitted the response. All answered data were anonymous and recommended. Data were entered in excel and descriptive statistics were performed using SPSS software version 25.

Results The result showed that the birth order in family was more than 44.85% were first born, 11.96% participants were middle born, 31.03% of the participants had effect on child behaviour with birth order on educational settings. 28.57% of the participants showed that sibling role is related to academic success in life.

Conclusions There was a little significance gained from the response rate of the participants which showed that there was a relationship between birth order and academic performance. The controversy of birth order effect on academics may vary among countries, family size and different cultures.