Advancement Through Research
The study was carried out to determine the essential knowledge and skills in operating and maintaining cell phones for enhancing business transactions among adult businessmen and women in rural-based communities in Ekiti State, Southwest Nigeria. Three research questions guided the study while three null hypotheses formulated were tested at .05 level of significance. The study made use of descriptive survey design. The participants for the study were 1,327 comprising of 110 lecturers, 43 technologists and technicians, and 1,174 illiterate businessmen and women. The sample size was 327 comprised 110 lecturers, 43 technicians while purposive sampling technique was used to select 174 registered illiterate businessmen and women. A 95-item questionnaire was used as an instrument for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts while intrinsic validity coefficients obtained for each section of the instrument were as follows: Section A, 0.89; Section B, 0.83; section C, 0.81. Cronbach’s Alpha reliability method was used to determine the internal consistency of the questionnaire items and an overall reliability coefficient of 0.89 was obtained. Three hundred and twenty-seven copies of the questionnaire were administered on respondents by the researchers and three research assistants on one to one basis. Three hundred and three copies of the questionnaire were retrieved which represents 92.66 per cent return rate. The data collected were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and improvement need index (INI) to answer the three research questions while analysis of variance was employed to test the null hypotheses at .05 probability level. Results revealed that majority of the businessmen and women in Ekiti State needed capacity building or improvement in the knowledge and skills for enhancing business transactions within and beyond rural communities. Furthermore, the results of the study revealed that majority of the respondents agreed with the 32 essential skills in operating cell phones for enhancing business transactions within and beyond rural communities. The result also revealed that 33 essential skills in maintenance of cell phones were required by businessmen and women for enhancing their business transactions. Hence, there is need to package the findings of the study into training programme and use it for building the capacity of illiterate businessmen and women Ekiti State of Nigeria.
Cell phone users, Illiterate businessmen and women, Technologists, Business operation, Transaction
