Time Allocation Between Academic and Extracurricular Activities Among Undergraduates: An Analysis of Bivariate Tobit Model

Abstract

Time management is currently a survival skill for undergraduate students, especially since they are trying to balance their academic programs with extracurricular activities. The study aimed to find out how students allocate their time between academic and extracurricular activities, and explore the differences in time allocation among males and females. For these purposes, the primary data were collected from 118 management undergraduates who are following the different special degree program at the faculty of business studies, University of Vavuniya. The collected data were analyzed using various analytical tools such as frequency, descriptive statistics, independent samples t – test and bivariate Tobit model. Among the total samples, 71.2% of the students are females and rest of the 28.8% of the are males. Descriptive statistics of time allocation among the students shows that, female students allocate more time for academic and less time for extracurricular activities, but the time allocation for these two activities made by the males are nearly same. Results of independent samples t – test suggest that, there is a mean difference in the time allocation for academic activities across males and females, but there is no difference in time allocation for extracurricular activities across males and females. To identify the factors influencing the time allocation between academic and extracurricular activities, Bivariate Tobit regression model was employed where the above two were taken as censored dependent variables in the study. Estimate results of the model revealed that, gender and degree of specialization were the major significant factors in determining the time allocation between academic and extracurricular activities. The research shows that undergraduate students of the Faculty of Business Studies, University of Vavuniya, are highly engaged in extracurricular activities, and as high as the participation levels are, their time management practices are different. The findings of the study may helpful for the students to improve their achievements in both academic and extracurricular activities.