Mental Ability of Junior Secondary School Students in Basic Technology Multiple Choice Objective Test in Nigeria

The study examined mental ability of Junior Secondary SchoolStudents in Basic Technology in Nigeria. The study adopted survey researchdesign. The purpose of this study is to compare the mental abilities of juniorsecondary school students in basic technology in terms of age, sex and typesof school (Urban and Rural). Two hundred students were selected from thetarget population in three senatorial districts of Ondo State using multi-stagesampling technique. Thirty multiple-choice objective test items were drawnfrom past questions in Junior Secondary School Basic Technology andadministered on the selected students. One research question was raised,three hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 alpha level. Datacollected were subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics. Results ofthe analysis revealed that there was no significant difference between theperformance of students between the age of 12-13, 14-15, and 15 years pluson basic technology multiple choice test. Also there was no significantdifference between the performance of male and female students on basictechnology multiple-choice test. Despite the fact that there was no significantdifference between students performance in term of age, the mean valuerevealed that students at tender age (12-13 years) performed better than theircounterparts who are older in age in basic technology multiple choice test. Itwas recommended among others that learning of basic technology and anyother related subjects should commence from early stage of humandevelopment.