Gender and Performances: The Level of Communication Apprehension (CA) Among Diploma of Accountancy Students in Politeknik Tuanku Sultanah Bahiyah

Abstract

In recent years, communication skills have been important criteria in entering the job market in Malaysia as professional accountants. Prior accounting related researchers also have identified communication apprehension (CA) as problem for improving communication skills but found inconsistent results. However, there was emphasized given to gender and performances impact of students CA. Through review of these researches, also identified that communication skills are very important for very accountant professionals especially in communicating information and decision making process. This study tries to provide a little evidence as to whether the gender and performances of final students of Diploma of Accountancy (DAT) in Politeknik Tuanku Sultanah Bahiyah (PTSB) affects the communication apprehension level of the students. A number of 61 DAT final semester students January 2009 intake, have been selected for this survey. Reliability test, descriptive test, T-test and ANOVA will be carry out in this research. An adaptation of The Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA) questionnaire from prior researchers will used for this research. The finding of the study shows that female students are likely to be more apprehensive than male students. Furthermore, the study indicates that there is significant difference on communication apprehension level among 3 categories of student’s performance. The result of this study could assist accounting lecturers in designing and improving the teaching and learning process in classroom to enhance the students’ communication skills.