| The problem of this study was to determine whether there were significant differences among the perceptions of secretarial faculty from Ohio's technical and/or community colleges, supervisors/managers of secretaries, and entry-level secretarial employees in Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Ohio, regarding the secretarial competencies needed by the secretarial graduate from Ohio's technical and/or community colleges.; This study solicited responses from Ohio's technical college professors regarding their perceptions of necessary skills in secretarial curriculums and compared their responses to managers of entry-level secretaries and to the entry-level secretaries themselves from Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Ohio. The survey method of collecting data was used in this research study. Three questionnaires were used in this study to collect data: the first questionnaire to investigate college perceptions of curriculum content for the secretarial student; the second questionnaire to investigate the perceptions of managers of entry-level secretaries; and the third questionnaire to investigate the perceptions of the entry-level secretaries themselves.; Results from this study focused on eight major grouped skill areas: Communication skills, computer skills, document composition, dictation and transcription skills, mathematical skills, records retention, telephone skills, and support skills. Respondents were also questioned on a variety of demographic areas, which included specific software packages in use at each institution.; Educators rated the majority of individual skills on the questionnaire to be important for the secretarial graduate, while managers and secretaries rated only half of the skills in the important range. All three groups did concur, however, on the top three skills important to the secretarial graduate, those skills being in the area of communications. All three groups also concurred on the top three grouped skill areas, those being: Communications, telephone skills, and support skills. Educators rated mathematical skills the lowest in importance, while managers and secretaries rated dictation/transcription skills the lowest.; In the area of software usage, all three groups concurred in their primary software choices. WordPerfect was the number one word processing software package; WordPerfect Desktop was the number one desktop software package; and Lotus 1-2-3 was the number one spreadsheet software package. |
