| The purpose of the study was to compare the basic communication skills achievement of high school seniors enrolled in vocational business education with that of college preparatory and general students, who comprised the academic education category. In addition, differences in basic communication skills achievement between the two types of delivery systems in vocational business education, intensive office education and cooperative office education, were examined.;The Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills, Language Mechanics and Language Expression sections; the Short-Form Test of Academic Aptitude; and a socioeconomic questionnaire were administered to a population of students in intact classes volunteered by their instructors. The 314 respondents were categorized by curricular or program enrollment: 80 college preparatory, 46 general education, 62 intensive office education, and 126 cooperative office education students. Type of curriculum and type of vocational business education program were the independent variables of the ex post facto study. Socioeconomic background and academic ability were introduced separately as covariates.;Analysis of variance and analysis of covariance statistical procedures were employed. Significant differences existed between vocational education and academic curricula before and after achievement scores were adjusted for the two covariates, with the vocational business students demonstrating significantly higher scores than those of the academic education students, either clustered or considered separately as college preparatory and general education groups.;Significant differences between vocational business education intensive office education and cooperative office education programs were not observed either through raw scores or when socioeconomic status was introduced as a covariate. However, a significant difference was observed between vocational business education programs when academic ability was introduced as a covariate. The adjusted basic communication skills scores for cooperative office education students were higher than those of the intensive office education students. |
