Published Paper Details:

Background: Life skills are the abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. Every one of us learns a number of skills while going through the different stages of life. Skills are the learned capacity which helps us to do a task effectively and these can be acquired through practice and patience. Objectives : To assess the life skills among B.Sc. nursing students, find out association between life skills and socio-demographic variables and determine the correlation amongst the areas of life skills in terms of self-awareness, effective communication, interpersonal relationship, decision making, problem solving, coping with stress. Methodology- : Descriptive correlational study was conducted among 207 B.Sc. nursing students of 4 selected nursing colleges of Guwahati, Assam by using proportionate random sampling technique. A standardised "Life Skills Assessment Scale" was used for the study. Ethical permission was obtained from the Institutional Ethics Committee of Regional College of Nursing, Guwahati-32. Results: Out of 207 subjects 3(1.4) had very high level of life skills, 28(13.5%) had high, 141(68.1%) had average life skills, 28(13.5%) had low and 7(3.4%) had very low level of life skills. The overall mean life skill score was 203.5 with SD=18.61. Majority of the students had average level of life skills in all the areas of self-awareness, effective communication, interpersonal relationship, decision making, problem solving, coping with stress. The study included numbers of socio-demographic variables like age, gender, place of residence, no. of siblings, type of family, education and occupation of parents and monthly income of the family to examine significant association with life skills. None of the variables were found significantly associated. The study found that effective communication was significantly correlated with interpersonal relationship (r = 0.329, p=0.000); decision making (r = 0.041, p=0.000); problem solving (r = 0.307, p=0.000); coping with stress (r = 0.406, p=0.0491), Interpersonal relationship was significantly correlated with decision making (r = 0.342, p = 0.000); problem solving (r = 0.389, p = 0.000); and coping with stress (r = 0.257, p = 0.000), Decision making was significantly correlated with problem solving (r = 0.381, p = 0.000); and coping with stress (r = 0.304, p = 0.000). Conclusion: The study concluded that majority of the nursing students had average life skills and so they need life skills education to enhance their skills.