Academic Difficulties Related to Literacy Experienced by University Students in Saudi Arabia: Developing a Screening Questionnaire and Examining Students’ Experiences

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a questionnaire to identify students who are at risk of developing academic difficulties related to literacy in higher education in Saudi Arabia. The study adopted a mixed methodological pragmatic approach with two phases. Data for Phase One was obtained from 341 female Saudi students through the Student Academic Difficulties at Risk (SADR) questionnaire, administered at the beginning of the academic year. After six months, three sets of data were gathered: Students’ Self-Inventory (SSI) with 188 students, teacher reports on students’ academic performance with five teachers reporting on 96 students, and students’ academic Grade Point Average (GPA). In Phase Two, based on the findings of the SADR questionnaire, two students were purposively chosen from each of three different groups for case studies. The findings from Phase One suggested that some of the SADR subscales had high reliability and others showed poor reliability. The results also showed that the SADR questionnaire and GPA correlated and that the regression analysis showed a predictive value for the reading scale. However, case-level analysis showed that the SADR questionnaire could not be reliably used to predict GPA. Additional analysis showed that SSI had high reliability for all subscales and correlated with the SADR questionnaire as well as with GPA. The reading and writing subscales from the SADR questionnaire can predict continued academic difficulties that are related to reading and writing at university level. Phase Two involved case study investigations into true positive, false positive, and false negative predictions of the reliable scales in the SADR questionnaire. The findings of Phase Two showed that a variety of influences affected academic attainment, such as motivational, wellbeing-related, and socio-cultural reasons.