The Relationship Between Labour Market Core Skills Requirements And University Graduate Soft Skills Competence
[A CASE STUDY OF NORTH-WEST, NIGERIA]

Instrumentation
    The instrument to be used for the study will be a researcher-designed questionnaire titled “Labour Market Core Skills Requirements and University Graduate Soft Skills Competence Questionnaire (LMCSRUGSSCQ)”. This will comprise two sections “A and B”. Section “A” will consist of personal information of participants such as types of organisations, location and position held. Section “B” will consist of thirty (30) items to be drawn from the research questions raised for the study.
    In order to ensure the validity of the research instrument, copies of the draft of the instrument will be given to five experts (the supervisor of the study, two experts in the Department of Educational Management and two experts from the field of Measurement and Evaluation, Faculty of Education, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria) for their comments on the face and content validity. Based on their comments and corrections, corrected copy will be tested for reliability. The test re-test method of reliability will be used. Copies of the questionnaire will be administered in a State (Kebbi), that is not selected as part of the sample of the study, using 126 participants. The questionnaire will be presented twice to the participants within an interval of four weeks. Responses from the two administrations of the questionnaire will be analysed using the Pearson product-moment correlation Statistics.
Procedure for Data Collection
    The copies of the questionnaire will be administered by the researcher and three research assistants. The researcher will administer the questionnaire in Zamfara State while the three research assistants will cover the three other States (Kaduna, Jigawa and Katsina) after due approval would have been sought and granted by the appropriate authorities of different organisations selected for the study.
Data Analysis Techniques
    The data to be collected for this study will be analysed through Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS Version 21) using the descriptive and inferential statistic methods. The descriptive statistics of percentage, mean and standard deviation will be used to analyse demographic data and answer the research questions while inferential statistics of the Pearson product-moment correlation will be used to ascertain relationship between the independent variable and operational variables at 0.05 level of significance.
Decision Rule
    Decision rule for items (six to ten) 6-10 in Section “B” of the instrument for this study is as follows:
Mean score from 4.1 – 5.0 was treated as “Very High”
Mean score from 3.1 – 4.0 was treated as “High”
Mean score from 2.1 – 3.0 was treated as “Moderate”
Mean score from 1.1 – 2.0 was treated as “Low”
Mean score from 0.1 – 1.0 was treated as “Very Low”.