Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication

 

Date of this Version

Summer 7-1976

Comments

A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Adult and Continuing Education Under the Supervision of Professor James T. Horner

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the acceptability of evaluation measures which have been used to report the results of vocational technical education programs. Acceptability was defined as the willingness of a person to use the particular information in making decisions regarding vocational technical education programs. The initial group of measures was obtained by reviewing published reports on the results of vocational technical education, manpower and related types of programs. A categorized list of 101 items was presented to a jury of professional administrators and public policy makers to identify those items which they would use in decision making. A total of 54 items was selected and incorporated into a survey questionnaire. Fourteen decision maker groups were selected. They were grouped in areas of Administrators, Policy Makers and Consumers. They were also divided as to area of State level and local level concerns. Two subgroups, Local Policy and Local Administration were identified for comparison in the study. The responses of the user groups were used to rank order the evaluation measures and compare the user groups. Factor analysis was used to identify ten factors. The ranks of the evaluation measures in each factor were used to identify user group acceptance of the factors. There appear to be observable differences in the rank orders assigned by the various groups. Six of the ten factors were judged to be of special interest to one element of user groups. The other four factors were acceptable by two or more user groups. The factor analysis identified six factors that account for over 84% of the variance. These factors were (1) Transition from School to Work Role, (2) Costs and Proximity of Education to Job Market, (3) Supervisor Evaluation of Employee Performance, (4) Employment Benefits from Education Program, (5) Appraisal of Program Benefits, (6) Earnings and Other Employee Benefits as Related to Education Program, (7) Evaluation in Retrospect By Employee, (8) Elements of Basic Education, (9) Earnings Pattern, and (10) Extent of Education Required for Employment.

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