August 6, 2006
August 6, 2024
Page No 255-263
Roshan Lal Zinta
Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla
36-257-265The purpose of the present study is to investigate the impact of rural and urban background on performance among the high and low self-efficacious students studying in various senior secondary schools of Shimla District of Himachal Pradesh in India. The data were collected on a sample of 416 (208 rural and 208 urban) self-efficacious subjects (mean age of 16.5 years) by following the criterion of selection M ± 1 SD. The students were divided into eight groups, four from rural (males and females) and four from urban (males and females) with high and low in self-efficacy comprises of n = 52 subjects in each group. The subjects from both the backgrounds ( rural and urban ) were given problem solving task (anagram solution) to perform. The task comprises of several English letters words selected from adjectives placed in a jumbled up manner. The subjects have to solve these jumbled up words in a meaningful way within stipulated time. For recording the performance multifarious comparison were made by applying the appropriate statistical procedure in order to detect performance within rural and urban as well as between rural and urban conditions of both the gender with high and low in self-efficacy. The result revealed that there was a nonsignificant difference (p > 0.05) in the performance of boys and girls with high and low in self-efficacy within rural and urban settings but highly significant (p<0.01) differences in performance were found between rural and urban setting with the males and females high and low in self-efficacy. The urban students high as well as low in self-efficacy significantly (p < 0.01) outperformed the rural students in problem solving task. Urban high self-efficacious females significantly ( p<0.01 ) outperformed both rural males and females with high and low in self-efficacy as well as urban females with high and low in self-efficacy and urban females with low in self-efficacy. Overall the urban selfefficacious students significantly outperformed rural self-efficacious students and the females of rural and urban backgrounds competed equally well with males in problem solving task.