The Presence of Non-Cognitive Abilities and Skills in Secondary School Graduates Compared to their Cognitive Abilities and Skills

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to identify the most significant non-cognitive abilities and skills among secondary school graduates. The sample was randomly selected from students at the city of Al-Madina Al-Munawwarah. The sample size was 20 for the pilot study and 851 for the real study. To achieve the goal of this study, the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) developed by Costa and McCrae and Non-cognitive Questionnaire (NCQ) at the university level by Trecey and Sedlacek were adapted by using a variety of scientific procedures and statistical methods appropriate for this type of studies. Through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis results found nine significant factors , five factors were taken from NEO PI-R instrument and four factors were extracted from the NCQ scale . Also, the General Aptitude Test (GAT) of the National Center for Assessment was used as a benchmark to compare the different levels of cognitive abilities and skills in a range of factors that measure the non- cognitive abilities and skills at a sample of this research . For this reason the secondary school graduates were classified into three levels (high, medium, low) according to their scores on the GAT test. The results of the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and discriminant analysis (Stepwise method) showed that the high school graduates in various cognitive ability levels lack many of the non- cognitive abilities and skills.