Personality Traits and Academic Underachievement of Secondary School Students in Bayelsa State

The study investigated the relationship between personality traits and academic underachievement among secondary school students in Yenagoa and Ekeremor local government areas in Bayelsa State. Correlational Survey research design was used for the study with a focus on three personality traits namely; openness to experience, conscientiousness and extraversion. The population of the study consisted of 3,610 SSII students in the two local government areas. Three instruments were used to gather the needed data; they are Bakare’s Progressive Matrices (BPM) which was used to identify students with high mental ability, Teachers Made Achievement Test (TMAT) and Students’ Personality Descriptive Scale (SPTDS). Purposive sampling techniques were used to draw a sample of 200 students identified as underachievers while simple random sampling technique was used to select the schools for the study. Pearson products moment correlation was used to answer the research questions and probability level with chosen alpha level of 0.05 used to test the hypotheses. The study found out that there was a significant negative relationship between openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion and academic underachievement among the senior secondary school students in Ekeremor and Yenagoa local government area. Based on the findings it was recommended among others that the government should establish effective guardian and counselling units in all the secondary schools in the local government areas to guide both high and low achieving students.