Assessment of the influence of age and gender on acquired skills by engineering students

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this work is to explore the relationship between the skills acquired by students of Engineering in the Nigerian university education system and the demographic characteristics of the students, such as gender and age, which could influence the attainment of these skills. A total of 112 students were surveyed to determine which of 24 stated skills they possess. Afterwards, dummy variable multiple regression technique was used for analysis. Results showed a significant relationship between gender especially, and age of students to a lesser degree, and the total number of skills acquired by the students. Specifically, the study was able to show that being a male student is more likely to lead to a student acquiring an average of about 1.79 more skills than his female counterparts. This is so if the values of all other variables such as student age and source of the skills acquisition are held at constant levels. The result presented in this work was also able to show that students who engage external sources and activities for skills acquisition fare better than students who do not.

Keywords

• Skills acquisition
• Digital skills
• Gender gap
• Engineering education