This project was conducted to study home economics curriculum needs by surveying former secondary home economics students to determine what tasks they learned in class and what instruction would have been helpful in order to provide curriculum managers, developers of materials, administrators, and teachers with more guidance in meeting the needs of consumer and homemaking students. Secondary school graduates of 1978-1982 who had been enrolled in home economics courses in seven Louisiana parishes (n=1,442) completed questionnaires. Participants rated each of 42 listed consumer and homemaking tasks as having been taught or not taught in their home economics courses and as needed or not needed. All tasks were recorded as needed by a majority of former students. Thirty of the 42 tasks considered were rated as having been taught and needed while 12 topics were considered needed but not taught. Respondents' sex, employment status, number of semesters enrolled in home economics, and year of graduation caused variations in whether tasks were perceived as having been taught or needed. Problems noted in the study were the low response rate to the questionnaire (12 percent) and the fact that all tasks were rated as needed. It was suggested that in a more appropriate questionnaire former students might have been asked to rank the tasks in importance. (KC)