Investigating students’ perception towards economics education / Azniza Ahmad Zaini, Roslilee Abdul Halim and Zulkifli Ab. Ghani Hilmi

This paper investigates the perception and attitudes of non-business major students in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) towards economics education and their relationship on students’ academic performance. One of the key performance indicators in the academic programme of the university is to achieve less than twenty percent failures in all subjects offered. A four-semester examination results revealed that students constantly obtained high failure rate in two economics introductory subjects. Using students taking these two economics courses as respondents, dimensions of attitudes towards economics education were identified through the use of an exploratory factor analysis. Four factors were extracted from a 26-item questionnaire identified as ‘Value’, ‘Difficulty’, ‘Cognitive’ and ‘Affective’. Cronbach’s Alpha for the four factors was acceptable. The findings suggested that there was no significant difference between male and female students on the four dimensions of attitude even though the achievement of female students’ was higher than males. Students who did not perform were found to have a more negative attitude on the four dimensions of attitude compared to those who performed. Regression of the final exam scores on the four latent variables obtained from the factor analysis revealed that subject difficulty and gender, taken together, were significantly associated with students’ achievement

Job Embeddedness and Organizational Climate

Issues regarding persons with disability (PWD) at workplace have become an endless argument.  PWD faced difficulties at their workplaces after struggling to get the job. They faced with problems that could not make them work longer. This paper examines the relationship between organizational climate and their job embeddedness.  It reveals that disabled employees must be supported by an appropriate organizational climate to ensure their embeddedness with the company. The findings can be used in the creation of a better organizational climate specially prepared for the disabled employees as part of the company’s responsibilities as the PWD have their rights in receiving the same treatment as received by other normal employees.Keywords: Organizational Climate; Job Embeddedness; Disabled Employee; Person with Disability2398-4279 © 2017 The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, UniversitiTeknologi MARA, Malaysia

Quality of life: commuter couples / Nor Habibah Tarmuji, Siti Noorul Ain Nor Azemi and Zulkifli Ab. Ghani Hilmi

Malaysia is indeed in a very comprehensive plan to ensure livelihood, poverty and social transformation. One of the strategies is to enhance the quality of life of Malaysians. Recently, commuter couples are becoming a phenomenon in Malaysia. Husbands and wives stay at different locations because of career commitment. According to the article in Utusan Malaysia dated 3rd March 2011, Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia (JAKIM) in 2009 recorded that a divorce occurred every 15 minutes. Thus, JAKIM has organized a lot of programs to overcome this problem. Besides that, there a lot of news on crimes, alcoholism and drug addiction among youth. Therefore, successful family is the most important factor to have quality future generations. The disruption of the family institution has a significant negative effect on children. Dual-career commuter couples also have risk, challenges the family upbringing and creates possibilities of disruption to the family. So, this study intends to determine the factors affecting the quality of life of commuter couples. Hopefully this study will be able to be a guideline in achieving a successful family life. The main purpose of this study is to determine which factor affects the quality of life of commuter couples such as physical, psychological, social, financial well-being, and child upbringing. Secondly it is to compare the quality of life of commuter couples according to some demographic factors. A simple random sampling will be used to select the number of respondents from a list of UiTM staff from the Department of Administration UiTM Pahang. The data will be collected using a combination of self-construct questionnaires and established questionnaire which is WHO Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF). Descriptive analysis, independent sample t-test, analysis of variance will be used to analyze the data. The result from this study is very important to improve the quality of life in terms of the physical, psychological, social, and financial well-being. Not only mothers but also fathers have an important contribution in their children's lives through the living arrangement for family members and the family structure

Investigating students’ perception towards economics education / Azniza Ahmad Zaini, Roslilee Abdul Halim and Zulkifli Ab. Ghani Hilmi

This paper investigates the perception and attitudes of non-business major students in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) towards economics education and their relationship on students’ academic performance. One of the key performance indicators in the academic programme of the university is to achieve less than twenty percent failures in all subjects offered. A four-semester examination results revealed that students constantly obtained high failure rate in two economics introductory subjects. Using students taking these two economics courses as respondents, dimensions of attitudes towards economics education were identified through the use of an exploratory factor analysis. Four factors were extracted from a 26- item questionnaire identified as ‘Value’, ‘Difficulty’, ‘Cognitive’ and ‘Affective’. Cronbach’s Alpha for the four factors was acceptable. The findings suggested that there was no significant difference between male and female students on the four dimensions of attitude even though the achievement of female students’ was higher than males. Students who did not perform were found to have a more negative attitude on the four dimensions of attitude compared to those who performed. Regression of the final exam scores on the four latent variables obtained from the factor analysis revealed that subject difficulty and gender, taken together, were significantly associated with students’ achievement