This compelling volume presents the work of innovative researchers dealing with current issues in training and training effectiveness in work organizations. Each chapter provides an integrative summary of a research area with the goal of developing a specific research agenda that will not only stimulate thinking in the training field but also direct future research. By concentrating on new ideas and critical methodological and measurement issues rather than summarizing existing literature, the volume offers definitive suggestions for advancing the effectiveness of the training field. Its chapters focus on emerging issues in training that have important implications for improving both training design and efficacy. They discuss various levels of analysis-- intra-individual, inter-individual, team, and organizational issues--and the factors relevant to achieving a better understanding of training effectiveness from these different perspectives. This type of coverage provides a theoretically driven scientist/practitioner orientation to the book.
The 1982 statistics on the use of family planning and infertility services presented in this report are preliminary results from Cycle III of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics. Data were collected through personal interviews with a multistage area probability sample of 7969 women aged 15-44. A detailed series of questions was asked to obtain relatively complete estimates of the extent and type of family planning services received. Statistics on family planning services are limited to women who were able to conceive 3 years before the interview date. Overall, 79% of currently mrried nonsterile women reported using some type of family planning service during the previous 3 years. There were no statistically significant differences between white (79%), black (75%) or Hispanic (77%) wives, or between the 2 income groups. The 1982 survey questions were more comprehensive than those of earlier cycles of the survey. The annual rate of visits for family planning services in 1982 was 1077 visits /1000 women. Teenagers had the highest annual visit rate (1581/1000) of any age group for all sources of family planning services combined. Visit rates declined sharply with age from 1447 at ages 15-24 to 479 at ages 35-44. Similar declines with age also were found in the visit rates for white and black women separately. Nevertheless, the annual visit rate for black women (1334/1000) was significantly higher than that for white women (1033). The highest overall visit rate was for black women 15-19 years of age (1867/1000). Nearly 2/3 of all family planning visits were to private medical sources. Teenagers of all races had higher family planning service visit rates to clinics than to private medical sources, as did black women age 15-24. White women age 20 and older had higher visit rates to private medical services than to clinics. Never married women had higher visit rates to clinics than currently or formerly married women. Data were also collected in 1982 on use of medical services for infertility by women who had difficulty in conceiving or carrying a pregnancy to term. About 1 million ever married women had 1 or more infertility visits in the 12 months before the interview. During the 3 years before interview, about 1.9 million women had infertility visits. For all ever married women, as well as for white and black women separately, infertility services were more likely to be secured from private medical sources than from clinics. The survey design, reliability of the estimates and the terms used are explained in the technical notes.
Business, academia, industry, and the military require well trained personnel to function in highly complex working environments. To reduce high training costs and to improve the effectiveness of training, training system developers often use sophisticated training media such as, simulators, videodisks, and computer-based instruction. The designers of these training media are continually striving to provide maximum training effectiveness at minimum cost. Although literature is available on the implementation and use of specific training media, there is little guidance on a major feature that is central to these media. All of these media present the learner with an interactive simulation of the real world. Effective training system design can be facilitated if the requirements of the real-world task are properly included in training. A conceptual bridge is necessary to link these actual task requirements to the characteristics of the training system. This book provides such a conceptual bridge. The need for improved training is critical in the area of equipment operation, maintenance, and decision making tasks. For example, the importance of improved operator training in the nuclear power industry has become paramount since the Three Mile Island accident and the more serious accident at the Chernobyl reactor in the U. S. S. R. Technology, such as the availability and power of computers,offers a wider variety of training options, but requires additional training system design decisions.