An Investigation into the relation between free reading and educational achievements among psychology students at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

“open study” is an approach which could help a lot of people, students in particular, to obtain deeper understanding of concepts and events. This research tries to analyze the effects of open study on the educational success of psychology students at Ferdowsi University, so as to find this community’s ideas on open study and the impact of such study on their educational success.
this is an “applied research” conducted in the form of survey, based on Cochrane Formula with 128 undergraduate psychology students as its sample. Survey’s data were collected through a researcher-made questionnaire, in which the questions were extracted based on content analysis of psychology literature. The validity and reliability of the measuring tool were respectively confirmed by a number of teachers as well as experts, and Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.83 for the whole questionnaire.
Findings: open study is influential in students’ success in Farsi theoretical lessons, but it has no impact on the outcome of courses like foreign languages. All the students, whether having open study or not, unanimously believe that it has a positive influence on the students’ educational success. There’s no meaningful relation between open study and students’ educational success.
the findings of this research show that most of students commonly believe that open study has positive effect on their educational success, and generally, this kind of studying could enhance their scientific growth and prove useful in their educational success.