| The purpose of this normative research study was to compare the work readiness skills of high school senior vocational students in the areas of reading, writing, applied mathematics, listening, and teamwork based on scores obtained from the ACT Work Keys Assessment. Specific comparisons were made on the basis of gender, race, part-time work experience, participation in vocational organizations, and socio-economic status.; Analyses included multivariate and univariate analyses of variance, means and standard deviations which sought to identify variables which revealed a statistically significant amount of variance attributable to differences in groups. The results showed a statistically significant difference between the means of three of the comparison groups--males and females, African-Americans and Whites, and students with part-time job experience and those with none. There were no significant differences found in the scores on the Work Keys Assessment for students of differing socio-economic status and no significant differences in the scores of students who belonged to vocational clubs and those who did not. The Bonferroni follow-up test was used to prevent alpha inflation.; Several conclusions were drawn from this study. Males are better in applied mathematics than females. Girls perform better in writing and have a greater degree of teamwork skills than males. White students perform better in applied mathematics and teamwork than African-American students. Students with part-time job experience are overall better in the skills measured by the ACT Work Keys Assessment than are students with no part-time job experience. |
