Assessment of the Impact of Technical Skills Among N-Power Participants: A Socio-Demographic Perspective

Abstract: The study assessed the impact of technical skills among N-Power Programme participants in Delta State, based on socio-demographic factors. A survey research design was adopted in the study with a population of 13,145 (5,675 males and 7,470 females) from the 25 local government areas in Delta State. The sample size of 370 was determined using the method of Gill et al. (2010). The instrument for the study was a structured questionnaire tested for factor analysis at a range of coefficients of 0.97, 0.95, and 0.93 for the various measurements. The data were thereafter subjected to statistical analysis. Frequency and percentages were used for demographic analysis, while hypotheses were tested using t-test and ANOVA at a 0.05 level of significance. The findings from the result show that there is no significant difference in the technical skills of N-power participants based on sex (p-value>0.05 = 0.075); there is no significant difference in the technical skills of N-power participants based on marital status (p-value>0.05 =0.960); there is significant difference in the technical skills of N-power participants based on educational qualification (p-value<0.05 = 0.042). Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that there should be increased practical training, regular programme evaluation and post-training support such as mentorship and access to credit facilities to enhance skill retention and application. The study established empirical evidence that educational qualification significantly influences the technical skills of N-Power participants, as revealed by post-hoc analyses.