The Effect of Tangible and Intangible Rewards on Pupils’ Performance: A Case Study of Pupils in Assin South Zone, Central Region, Ghana

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to find out the effect of the use of tangible and intangible rewards on pupils’ performance. Six schools were selected from 41 primary six classes by simple random sampling in the Assin South Zone of the Central Region of Ghana for the study. There were 158 pupils involved in the study. They were made up of 102 boys and 56 girls. Quasi-experimental design was used for the study. The pretest-posttest comparison group was also adopted. The data collecting instruments were pretest and posttest developed by the investigator. The test items were twenty multiple choice questions each for English language and mathematics. There were three experimental schools and three control schools.. The three experimental schools received intervention for one month. The intervention took the form of teaching. The three control schools were taught by their class teachers without the use of any kind of reward. The researcher paid visits to the control schools to ascertain whether the teachers did use any form of rewards. There was a pretest before the intervention and a posttest after the one month period. The data was analysed by means of independent t-test and one way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The major findings of this study are that pupils who received tangible rewards showed a slight improvement in English language and mathematics. There was a significant improvement in the performance of pupils who received intangible rewards in English language and mathematics. Besides, both tangible and intangible rewards had significant effects on the pupils’ performance in mathematics. The use of intangible rewards in schools should outweigh that of tangible rewards.