Task Persistence and Students’ Academic Engagement as Predictors of Students’ Academic Achievement in Economics in Okigwe Education Zone 1 of Imo State

This study was conducted on task persistence and students’ academic engagement as predictors of secondary school students` academic achievement in Economics. The study was guided by three research questions and three hypotheses. The study was carried out in Okigwe Education Zone 1 of Imo State. A correlation research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised of 1445 senior secondary school II Economics students for 2022/2023 academic session, with sample of 232 Economics students from 6 secondary schools in three local government area; this was drawn using multi-stage sampling technique. The study adopted three instruments for data collection; task persistence questionnaire (TPQ), Students’ engagement Questionnaire (SEQ) and Economics Achievement Test (EAT). The internal consistency reliability indices of TPQ and SEQ were determined to be 0.83 and 0.81 using Cronbach alpha while the internal consistency reliability of (EAT) was 0.85 using KR-20. Pearson product moment correlation and multiple regression analysis were adopted to answer the research questions and test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result shows that task persistence and students’ engagement significantly predict students’ academic achievement in Economics. From these findings, it was recommended among others that, teachers should make sure that students are actively involved in teaching and learning process by so doing, the academic achievement of the students will be improved.