Factors determining the performance of the “right” candidates using Spearman’s RHO

Urban-rural digital divide occur in most parts of the world and this phenomenon is common in various states in Malaysia. The Rural ICT Guided Home-based Technopreneur (RiGHT) is a dedicated initiative established with an ultimate aim that is to bridge the urban-rural digital divide in Sarawak, a state in East Malaysia. It provides comprehensive and highly relevant information and communication technology (ICT) training to equip the candidates from rural Sarawak. Upon graduation, some selected graduates are supported both financially and technically to establish ICT centres in their villages for providing in-situ services to their community. This paper presents the study on how motivation and study strategy influence the performance of the candidates in the RiGHT programme. An adapted questionnaire was prepared based on the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) and Students’ Motivation towards Science Learning (SMTSL). A survey was conducted with 19 candidates from RiGHT programme. In RiGHT, the performance of the candidates were measured via two assessments i.e. Assessment 1 contains office suites software while Assessment 2 consists of a broader range of subjects such as designing software, information technology (IT) theory and practical skills. A non-parametric approach was needed as the score was not distributed evenly. Thus, Spearman’s rho was chosen for measurement. From the analysis conducted for Assessment 1, learning value is found to have the highest correlation (r = 0.495) among the motivation factors while peer learning (r = 0.538) has the highest correlation among the study strategy factors. On the other hand, only the extrinsic scale (r = 0.482) along with time management and study environment (r = 0.482) showed high correlation to the performance in Assessment 2. The significant correlation of assessment scores with the combination of motivation and study strategy (r = 0.714), confirms the hypothesis that motivation and study strategy has an impact on the performance of the RiGHT’s candidates throughout the training period. In this study, it was obvious that motivation had more significant impacts on performance, when compared to study strategy. It can be concluded that study strategy varies for everyone and there is no perfect strategy. Some insights from this survey study will be considered as the guideline for the selection of candidates with high potential, in the following intakes.