Undergraduate students' perceptions of factors contributing to their academic failure in Afghanistan

Sayeed Naqibullah Orfan, Najibullah Delir and Aminuddin Hashemi
Takhar University, Afghanistan

This study examined undergraduate students' perceptions of factors contributing to their academic failure at a public university in Afghanistan, utilising attribution theory as the analytical framework. Data were collected from 215 students majoring in various fields. Descriptive and inferential statistics, specifically Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis test were used for data analysis. The results revealed that students attributed their academic failure to various dispositional factors including disinterest in the field of study, poor time management and situational factors such as working to support their families. They also attributed their failure to a wide variety of institutional factors including instructors' behaviours (e.g., unapproachable), teaching (e.g., traditional methods), assessment practices (e.g., unrealistic exam demands) and an absence of support programs (e.g., mentorship) on campus. Our study also revealed gender differences; female students were more likely to attribute their failure to situational, mostly family related factors, while male students were more likely to attribute their failure to institutional factors. No significant differences were found between participants by their class, age or ethnicity. These results underscore the need for comprehensive, targeted interventions at multiple levels including policymakers, universities, educators, and administrators to improve students' academic performance.
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Authors: Sayeed N. Orfan (corresponding author) is currently a PhD student in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. His research focuses on governance, administration, and leadership in higher education. During the data collection phase of this research, he served as a faculty member in the School of Language and Literature, Takhar University, Afghanistan. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4584-1965 Email: sayeed.naqibullah@fulbrightmail.org Najibullah Delir has a bachelor degree in English language and literature from Takhar University, Afghanistan. He is an instructor at Saba Educational Academic and works as a data entry specialist at a public institution in Taloqan City. He was a senior student at Takhar University during data collection for this study. Email: najibullah.af2018@gmail.com Aminuddin Hashemi is a senior lecturer in English in the School of Language and Literature, Takhar University, Afghanistan. Mr Hashemi earned his masters degree in TESL from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and has published many research papers and participated in various national and international conferences. His research interests include TEFL, CALL, MALL, and online learning. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6052-1516 Email: aminuddin.hashemi@gmail.com Please cite as: Orfan, S. N., Delir, N. & Hashemi, A. (2025). Undergraduate students' perceptions of factors contributing to their academic failure in Afghanistan. Issues in Educational Research, 35(3), 1078-1095. http://www.iier.org.au/iier35/orfan.pdf