Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 2. Principal work function and level of respondent people contact
Lower People
Contact
Percentage
Hi gher Peopl e
Contact
Percentage
Frequency
Lower People Contact Roles
Applications programming
34
25.0%
Web development
12
8.8%
Systems programming
4
2.9%
Network administration
10
7.4%
Higher People Contact Roles
System support
32
23.5%
Project administration
13
9.6%
IT sales
2
1.5%
IT staff supervision
6
4.4%
Education and training
5
3.7%
Recruiting and staff placement
2
1.5%
Consulting
16
11.8
Total
136
44 %
56%
Ranking Academic Subjects
The instrument contained two sections pertaining to academic preparation of gradu-
ates. These two sections separately covered the technical areas of an IS business degree and
the other academic areas that are not specific to IS. A seven-point Likert scale (1 = irrelevant
through to 7 = essential) was used to measure the response for each question. For each group
mentioned above, the mean and standard deviation for each question was computed, as
shown in Table 4.
Table 4 shows the respondents' views of the importance of academic subjects. The data
clearly indicate that core business subjects such as Accounting [3.98 (lower), 4.25 (higher)],
Economics [3.38 (lower), 3.83 (higher)], Law [3.62 (lower), 4.42 (higher)], and Statistics [4.00
(lower), 4.32 (higher)] rate rather low in importance among practicing IS professionals. With
