Review Attitudes, Habits and Board Performance of Newly Registered Criminologists: A Basis for Criminology Program Enhancement

Pat Riley (n.d.) said, “Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.†Most universities and colleges today strive to achieve global and local recognition for their excellence in delivering and catering education, while many fixate on expanding their services, amenities, and status. It may be important to put the student’s achievement on an equal pedestal as a measure of academic excellence. The board examination performance of the graduates is a significant area of interest for learning institutions and their stakeholders. It is extensively recognized that the board performance of graduates is influenced by a variety of factors, which may include their review attitudes and review habits. Attitudes may be viewed through different lenses. Mukandiwa (2023) defined attitude as the person’s feelings, beliefs, and predisposition towards a certain issue, individual, or circumstance. He further discussed that attitudes are a complex mental state that involves individuals’ emotions, beliefs, and cognition that may influence how they perceive and interact with their environment and all things that exist within it. Meanwhile, review attitudes as a factor encompasses graduates’ feelings, beliefs, motivation, and many others cited by several researchers. Colhando (2020), mentioned that a learning attitude means a self-initiated or voluntary attitude that is a natural result of human curiosity and motivation. Most people view favorable attitudes towards learning as positively related to better academic performance. In contrast, an unfavorable attitude may impact the graduates negatively, as it may hinder their ability to absorb information, which subsequently leads to poorer academic performance. On the other hand, review habits may refer to the system a learner adopts or develops to maximize his preparedness for taking exams or any academic-related activities. Habit, as defined by Covey (2004) is the intersection of knowledge, which can refer to “Knowing what to do? Skills, “knowing how to do it,†and desire, which may mean “want to do†. This exemplifies the significance of developing good habits to attain one’s goal. Among the review habits cited by researchers is learners’ dedication which may include the amount of time they spent per day reading their lessons, proper selection of learning materials, their attendance at review centers, selection of a positive study environment, note-taking during review lectures, and many others. Similar to review attitudes, positive review habits are often correlated with better board performance. At the same time, negative review habits such as devoting less time to study, reading less frequently, not taking notes during lectures, and failing to set a study plan among others affect the student’s academic performance negatively. There have been several studies that tried to correlate student review attitudes and review habits to board performance, and while it is true that most come into agreement that positive review attitudes and review habits will result in better academic performance it is significant to take note that there are still some studies conducted that claim otherwise.