Life skills knowledge of rural and urban high school freshmen in Illinois

The purpose of the study was to diagnose the knowledge level of rural and urban high school freshmen in seven life skills areas. The life skills were components of education curricula in the areas of consumer economics, career education, and health education.; The life skills addressed were the seven domains addressed in the norm-referenced test instrument used for data collection. Tests for Everyday Living (TEL) was the instrument and was published by CTB/McGraw-Hill.; The participants in the study were male and female high school freshmen from five Illinois school districts. Two rural and three urban schools participated in the data collection. Once agreements were finalized from the participating principals and teachers, arrangements were made for test administration. As was the procedure for the preliminary testing of the instrument, participating teachers administered the tests to their own students.; Six research questions were analyzed using descriptive statistics and tables representing the rank order, means, and standard deviations of each of the life skills test areas. A General Linear Model was used to determine the variance between gender and geographic region. The Statistical Analysis System (SAS) was used to complete statistical tests and procedures.; The following conclusions were based on the findings of this study: (1) The life skills knowledge level was average to low in all areas as compared to the norm-reference group. (2) The highest knowledge level of life skills was in purchasing habits. (3) The lowest knowledge level of life skills was in job-related behavior. Job-related behavior was also the lowest for the norm reference group. (4) Gender had no meaningful difference in the life skills knowledge of high school freshmen in the study. (5) Findings from this study revealed that the rural high school freshmen had significantly higher knowledge levels than the urban high school freshmen in each of the seven life skills areas.