Comparison of academic performance and mental health of gifted and normal school students

This research was conducted with the aim of comparison the academic performance and mental health of gifted and normal female students.

This research in terms of purpose was applied and in terms of implementation method was causal-comparative. The research population was gifted and normal female students of Talesh township in the academic years of 2018-19. The population of gifted female students was 104 people, which according to Krejcie and Morgan table number of 82 people were selected as a sample by simple random sampling method and accordingly, 82 normal female students who were matched with them were selected as a sample by purposive sampling method. The research tools were included the academic performance questionnaire (Pham & Taylor, 1999) and symptom checklist revised of mental disorders (Drogatis, Lipman & Covi, 1973). Data were analyzed by dependent t-test in SPSS-20 software.

The findings showed that gifted and normal female students were significantly different in terms of academic performance and all five components including self-efficacy, emotional effects, planning, lack of outcome control and motivation (P<0.05). In the other words, gifted female students were better off in terms of academic performance and its components. Other findings showed that gifted and normal female students were significantly different only in terms of two components of mental health including somatization and obsessive-compulsive (P<0.05), but in terms of overall mental health and other components including interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, aggression, phobia, paranoid ideation and psychoticism were not significantly different (P>0.05). In the other words, gifted female students were worse off only in terms of the two components of somatization and obsessive-compulsive, but there was no significant difference in terms of overall mental health and other components.

According to the results of the present study, planning is necessary to improve the academic performance of normal female students and reduce somatization and obsessive-compulsive of gifted female students.