The Elements of Training Evaluation

Abstract

This book addresses characteristics of field trails and characteristics of ratings necessary for making valid inferences about training effects, training capabilities, and proficiency. Chapter I describes and rebuts common rationalizations for conducting training evaluations that permit no valid inferences about training effects and for evaluation reporting practices that preclude estimating the extent to which evaluation findings permit valid inferences about training effects. Chapter II presents elementary rules of evaluation design and analysis. These rules apply for the most part to the design of field trails and to the analysis and interpretation of data from field trials. Chapter III deals with advantages and disadvantages of ratings and with rules for their use. The kinds of ratings addressed are those used in the U.S. military for estimating the training capabilities of new training and for individual and collective performance appraisal. The rating rules describe ways to elicit reliable and therefore potentially valid ratings from which valid inferences may be make about the effects of training. In Chapter IV we suggest that, in lights of the consistent failure of Army training evaluations to support valid inferences about training effects. We probably should try something different. Alternatives to traditional methods for evaluating new Army training are therefore described. Appendixes A through H provide elaboration of evaluation designs and methods presented earlier in the book.

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