International Journal of Social Science Research (IJSSR)

Rural and Urban Disparities in Multiple Intelligence Dimensions and Achievement in Mathematics among Secondary School Students in Guntur District

Geographic location, including rural and urban residence, is a strong predictor of educational access and cognitive skills in developing countries such as India. The present investigation endeavours to analyze that, whether, there is any significant difference between Rural and Urban school students in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh in MI on all the nine dimensions and AM through quantitative and qualitative-categorical analyses. Stratified random sampling was used to select 1,000 Class IX students — 500 Rural and 500 Urban — from 25 schools. Statistical techniques such as Independent Samples t-test and Chi-square (χ²) were used. Results showed that Urban students were significantly better on MI as a whole (t = 2.71, p < 0.01), and also significantly better on seven out of nine intelligence dimensions. Nevertheless, Chi-square analysis shows that there is no statistically significant difference in the distribution of MI level category (χ² = 5.560, NS) and in the distribution of MA level (χ² = 0.427, NS), serving a disaggregated qualitative and quantitative comparative overview with explicit policy relevance.