The Key Contributing Factors of Non-accounting Students’ Failure in the Introduction to Financial Accounting Course

This paper examines the ranking of contributing factors of failure in the examination result of non-accounting students in completing an Introduction to Accounting course. A questionnaire survey was conducted to a total of 142 non-accounting students who took Introduction to Accounting course for a semester. The results reveal that the major contributing factors of failure are this subject being a non preferred course, non availability of lecturers after class hours, ambiguous questions in the final exam and accommodation problems. In addition, by using chi-square analysis, the result also shows that proportion of male students who passed is significantly different to the proportion of female students who passed the exam. The result also shows that there is a significant relationship between prior knowledge in accounting and performance in Introduction to Accounting course. This study is unique as it considers the students performance in a subject that is not the main discipline of the students (i.e., accounting course for non-accounting students).