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This report reviews the personnel psychology literature related to training effectiveness and summarizes it into a three-dimensional matrix. Following an introduction, section II discusses how three components of training studies--training content, training method, and transfer of training--can be considered within a three-dimensional framework. Before discussing the three dimensions of the matrix, sections III and IV address two general areas of concern--worker performance and adaptability. They conclude that few studies make the connection between training effectiveness and performance and worker adaptability is not a well-documented construct. Section V describes the empirical studies that can be categorized by content area. It considers findings of studies that reviewed training in motor and technical skills, including computer skills training, and adaptability skills development, including interpersonal skill development, cross-cultural training, complex skill acquisition, and problem-solving skills. Section VI summarizes findings of research to determine whether a specific method of training is superior. It covers lecture, integrative learning, behavior modeling, and computer-assisted instruction. Section VII reviews research on the transfer of training and concludes that although several variables have been identified that contribute to the transfer of training, the relationship between them and successful transfer is still unclear. Appendixes include 5 endnotes and 69 references. (YLB)

The military is the largest educational and training institution in the United States and perhaps the world. Tangible benefits tied to military service include competitive pay, health care, paid vacation, and other perquisites. Compared to the civilian sector, the military has relatively more technicians, operators, mechanics, repairers, and transporters. A comparison of entry-level military jobs and civilian jobs shows that the former are rated as more complex. In addition, women and minorities have made considerable progress and enjoy more or less full-fledged member status, which includes equal rank, pay, and benefits. One of the most important benefits associated with the military is the opportunity to get an education. Furthermore, military educational benefits and effects do not end with time in service. Less tangible benefits are also associated with military service. Aside from solidifying and expanding basic academic and vocational skills, affiliation with the military imparts work attitudes and behaviors that are important factors in job performance and valued by employers in all sectors. As the military downsizes, employers will find at least in the short run a supply of able and valuable people to hire. Perhaps the biggest implication of downsizing for the work force is that the extensive opportunities provided by the armed forces will be open to fewer people. (Appendixes include 3 endnotes and 30 references.) (YLB)

Training issues can be examined from at least two perspectives: the structural level (macro-level) and the micro-level. Structural issues in the delivery of training include the following: absent or uneven corporate commitment, inadequate expenditures by businesses, degrees awarded by schools that do not guarantee skill mastery, poaching of trained workers, accounting rules that require training be treated as an expense and not an investment, inadequate government funding for retraining displaced workers, need for closer employer-school ties, and need for help from organized labor. Issues in the design, delivery, and evaluation of training efforts include an emphasis on the techniques and methods of training rather than the content and little emphasis on assessment of training outcomes. Training is critical to the implementation of four competitive strategies that firms use to compete for business in the marketplace and to gain competitive advantage--speed strategy, innovation strategy, quality-enhancement strategy, and cost-reduction strategy. Certain ground rules can enhance the likelihood that organizations and individuals will benefit from training. Before training, needs analysis should be done at multiple levels. During training, the objective is to select a training technique that accurately matches demonstrated training needs and to deliver training in a manner that maximizes learning, retention, and transfer. After training, long-term effects must be evaluated. (Contains 35 endnotes.) (YLB)

Although returns to military service may have been positive prior to Vietnam, since Vietnam the average veteran has neither benefited nor suffered economically from military service. Educational attainment is the primary reason veterans have earned more than nonveterans. Because the population as a whole has become more educated, military service does not seem to carry much of an economic advantage for the average veteran. This generalization must be tempered for three groups of veterans. The military functions as a highly effective jobs and scholarship program for minorities. Evidence consistently shows veterans with less than a high school degree do better than dropouts who do not enlist. Veterans trained in technical specialties comprise a third group that benefits from military service because their skills transfer readily to the civilian economy. Military reductions may exacerbate shortages of trained technicians and craftspersons. Policy makers should consider placing the burden of reductions in force on nontechnical occupational specialties. Since the military functions effectively as a jobs and scholarship program for minorities and the poor, another policy issue is how to ensure educational benefits to those who would be unable to acquire further education with military service. In addition, policies ought to be fashioned to create alternative forms of employment. (Appendixes include 4 endnotes and 32 references.) (YLB)

The methodology of five national surveys designed to estimate the scale and scope of training was analyzed to identify the reasons underlying the variability and unreliability of estimates of education and training. The five surveys were as follows: May Triennial Adult Education Supplement to the Current Population Survey, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Survey of Income and Program Participation, National Longitudinal Survey of High School Class of 1972, and High School and Beyond. The analysis focused on the following: fundamental purpose of each survey, population sampled, goodness of fit, and survey structure/design. The analysis established that the five surveys do not measure fully what they purport to measure. It was concluded, however, that when taken collectively, they provided an invaluable insight into the nature of work-related education and training in the United States. The following are recommendations for improving the surveys' reliability and capacity for measuring the scale and scope of education and training: (1) "bundle" questions focusing on incidence of work-related education and training with questions dealing explicitly with work and the skills needed for it; (2) include matched samples of employment establishments and employees; and (3) develop more explicit questions focusing on training credentials and certificates. (Contains 16 figures/tables and 19 references.) (MN)

Employer attitudes toward youth, the youth labor market, and prospects for a national system of youth apprenticeships were studied through a survey of firms that had participated in local youth apprenticeship or cooperative education programs in seven U.S. cities and focus group discussions with small and large employers in eight U.S. communities. The studies established that the period between completing school and obtaining a good job is getting longer, the link between formal schooling and work is becoming more tenuous, and employers (especially small firms) are generally wary of any policy initiative designed to encourage the hiring and training of new workers. Employers were reluctant to initiate youth apprenticeship programs given the present labor surplus/job shortage. They generally felt that youths lack discipline, good work attitudes, and communication skills and that schools do not prepare youth for employment. Screening was employers' dominant concern regarding participation in a youth apprenticeship program. Focusing national attention on the absence of good jobs for young people and emphasizing flexibility in any policies developed were concluded to be the keys to improving the school-to-work transition. (MN)

Data assembled from the sequence of Current Population Survey (CPS) tenure supplements for 1973, 1978, 1981, 1983, 1987, and 1991 were analyzed along with demographic characteristics and other variables available from the general CPS to identify changes in job retention rates in the United States throughout the 1980s. The analysis was based on Hall's method of estimating the distribution of eventual job tenure and Ureta's refinement of that procedure, which makes it possible to estimate historical 1-year job retention rates. Consideration was given to the possible effect of business cycles on retention rates. Overall, job retention rates remained fairly stable throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Disaggregation of the data by current tenure, age, race, sex, education, and occupation did, however, reveal some changes in 4-year retention rates by demographic group that correspond loosely to changes in the wage structure. Retention rates have, for example, declined for high school dropouts and high school graduates relative to college graduates and for blacks relative to whites. Except for the aggregate results for blacks, most of those changes were small and statistically insignificant, however. (Contains 10 tables/figures and 21 references.) (MN)

The old "nature versus nurture" argument has resurfaced in a new guise--the role of inherent ability or of education as the source of skill and the reason for achievement. Research shows that even one additional year of schooling raises a person's wages. Even when the relationship among education, productivity, and wages appears obvious, there is evidence for two arguments. The screening argument holds that investments in education reveal the job-relevant abilities and skills that students already possess--stopping some while allowing others to pass through the mesh. The human capital model argues that skills are acquired through investment in education, which adds to the overall volume of ability. Driving this debate is the notion of the returns provided both to the individual and society by educational attainment. However, structural changes in the economy, changes in policy, and shifts in demographics illustrate how societal trends contribute to the fluctuations in returns to education. Recommendations to find the most effective location for educational attainment include the following: developing better means of determining job-relevant abilities, encouraging business-school networks, increasing retention and educational attainment, and making educational loans and financial aid more accessible to students for whom investment in educational attainment shows real promise. (YLB)

Between 1950 and 1988, the number of professional and technical workers increased by 282% while the labor force as a whole only increased by 94%. Most persons employed as technicians work on or with reputedly complex technologies. Most work at the empirical interface between a larger production process and the materials on which the process depends. At such interfaces, the technician's task involves the complementary processes of transformation and caretaking. In some occupations, technicians buffer other occupations from contact with the empirical phenomena over which the latter are reputed to have mastery. In other occupations, technicians function as brokers bridging the organization they serve and the larger technical community associated with the technology they oversee. In either case, technicians require both formal and contextual knowledge. In view of technicians' roles and knowledge requirements, effective educational programs for training technicians must impart contextual knowledge of a technical domain, practicing technicians must be involved in designing technician training programs, and conceptions of technical education must be broadened to include translation competency. Policymakers must direct resources to developing tools for timely exchange of information and development of communities of practice. (Contains 35 references.) (MN)

For many youths, the early years in the labor market are characterized not by an absence of jobs but rather by a "churning" process that often delays the benefits of high school educational experiences for several years. Youth apprenticeship programs should be designed to serve as a strategy/vehicle of school reform, function as a labor market program, and create institutional structures that link employers and schools. Among the principles that should be followed in designing youth apprenticeship programs are the following: permit students to change their minds about choices; link work and schooling in a substantive way; encourage schooling beyond high school; avoid tracking, gender discrimination, adult displacement, and highly specific training; and provide high quality work placements rather than just work experience. Special attention must be paid to obtaining placements, developing certification criteria and procedures, and obtaining an adequate research and development base. A youth employment policy should do the following: reflect existing demands for youth labor, facilitate the school-to-work transition, be school based, and provide adequate services to out-of-school and disadvantaged youth. (Contains 16 references.) (MN)

Employers and policymakers have traditionally sought to manage skill shortages in technical and other occupations through initiatives predicted in one of two broad definitions of skill: skill-as-input and skill-as-artifact. A weakness of both these perspectives is that focusing on the inputs and outcomes of a labor process obscures or ignores the process itself. These two perspectives could be complemented by considerations of skill-in-practice. Recent attempts to address the growing demand for medical technicians and technologists illustrate how a practice-oriented approach to skill might shed light on the nature of skill shortages and lead to more effective policy. In response to skill shortages in medical technology, Congress has proposed two bills: the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) calling for increased technical education, and the Rural Clinical Laboratory Personnel Shortage Act, which would relax some of the stringencies of CLIA. Medical technicians and technologists endorse the bill designed to downgrade skill requirements; physicians favor the bill aimed at enhancing skill requirements. The technicians' endorsement may reflect their conviction that the bill is more congruent with the work they actually perform. An ethnographic study investigated technicians' definitions of skill-in-practice and the implications for resolving skill shortages in technical occupations. At the hospital observed, the technicians' notions of skill were based not on education or job design but on specific work practices: ability to troubleshoot machines, demonstration of improvisational techniques, and social pooling of knowledge and experience to interpret ambiguous results. (Contains 52 references.) (YLB)

Youth apprenticeships have the potential to address simultaneously two national dilemmas: how to prepare U.S. business and its workers for a high skills future and how to upgrade the academic skills of all students. The highly successful German model may require some modification to work well in the United States. The biggest change may have to take place in the attitudes of many people who are suspicious of a system that induces students to make career choices at a young age and requires a large amount of government oversight. Apprenticeships will not succeed unless business considers them a sound investment. The first step is creation of incentives for businesses to become partners with schools, hire young people, provide appropriate training, and assume a portion of the cost. For apprenticeships to succeed, schools will have to change their methods, schedules, and assumptions. Teachers must become more knowledgeable about employment and learn to work as partners with the business community; teaching methods must reinforce what apprenticing students learn on the job; the schedule must become more flexible; and schools must provide information regarding benefits to students and their families. The Federal Government can rewrite federal regulations to spell out how youth apprenticeship fits into existing laws, provide subsidies, and pass a national youth service law. Obstacles to change include tracking, union concerns, and lack of student aid. (YLB)

Predictions of occupational growth to the year 2000 show how important the "new crafts" are becoming. Workers who possess the new crafts perform jobs that often involve sophisticated technical knowledge but are not done by people with bachelor's degrees. The growth of technical jobs in the middle of organizations threatens the familiar division between managers who hold a store of technical knowledge and workers who carry out their orders. The new technical workers need a different blend of formal education up to an associate's degree level and continuing training at work afterward. Research shows that the new crafts are growing from both above and below. Many tasks done in the past by managers and elite professionals are being handed to technical workers; low-skilled workers who had little autonomy or responsibility in their routine jobs are now analyzing and responding to data. Factors driving the growth of technical jobs are the trend toward larger and more bureaucratic corporations, expansion of science, and technological change. Changes in the workplace present enterprises with huge challenges--to change ideas about the way jobs are organized and managed. Schools face the task of preparing students for jobs that do not fit the old categories of managerial or entry-level work. Workers will have to readjust their attitudes toward education. (YLB)

Most scholars adopt one of two orientations when explaining why some occupations are more skilled than others: realism or constructionism; both views would benefit from a consideration of interactionism. No occupations are more likely to have to negotiate their status than those that emerge from amateur or voluntary work. Members of such occupations, such as emergency medical technicians (EMTs), must convince their audiences in the course of face-to-face interaction that they have skill or knowledge sufficient to provide for a fee what has traditionally been free. A study focused on two commercial and two volunteer EMT agencies. The commercial agencies' actual proficiency was insufficient for establishing their reputation since some volunteers possessed equivalent skills and most of the emergency calls did not require advanced training. EMT societies made no distinction between paid and volunteer providers, and the public remained largely unaware of differences. To understand how and why the paid EMTs were acquiring a reputation for greater skills required consideration of cultural understandings, institutional supports, tasks, and even competencies as resources whose meaning and use were discovered in the course of ongoing interaction. Both groups' reputations were affected by interactions involving EMTs and interactions and interpretations of nurses, physicians, and other audiences. (Contains 90 references.) (YLB)

Establishment of a national-state system of world-class occupational skill standards is a first step in restructuring adult vocational-technical education and job training programs. Occupational skills standards provide the necessary foundation for addressing three major state policy issues: the state's proper role in private work-based training, improved effectiveness and efficiency of public programs, and development of a public-private credentialing system that promotes worker mobility. The German Dual System has been proposed as a model for transforming the vocational education and job training system in the United States. As shown by the Illinois Manufacturing Tech Prep Project, development of national skill standards should be based on certain assumptions about the role and structure of skill standards in state work force preparation programs: development of world-class standards, need for basic enabling skills and independent role performance, standards based on federal-state labor market policies, state education goals and implementation of applied academics, and skill assessment and credentialing. A national-state system of occupational skill standards can be constructed by building the following national-state systems: industry skill corporations, training occupations, occupational skill standards, professional and technical credentials, performance standards systems, and regulatory policies for public and private training providers. Appendices include three figures and sample skill standards from the Illinois Tech Prep Project. (Contains 38 references.) (YLB)