A SURVEY OF MANAGEMENT TRAINING AND EDUCATION PRACTICES IN U.S. COMPANIES

A survey was systematically developed to assess issues related to management training and education, and it was sent to 1,000 randomly selected U.S. companies with at least 1,000 employees. Based on a 61% response rate, findings were obtained regarding issues such as needs assessment, management training and development approaches, reasons for selecting particular programs, characteristics of participants, how decisions are made regarding who will participate, preparation and follow-up of participants, evaluation of management training programs, future management training trends, and needed training content. Significant findings by company size and industry type also are reported.     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PAY-FOR-PERFORMANCE PERCEPTIONS AND PAY SATISFACTION

A study was conducted with 104 hospital employees to assess the relationship between pay-for-performance perceptions and pay satisfaction. Unlike previous research examining this relationship, a multi-item measure of pay-for-performance perceptions and a multidimensional measure of pay satisfaction were used. As hypothesized, the results indicated a positive relationship between pay-for-performance perceptions and pay-raise satisfaction, pay-level satisfaction, and overall pay satisfaction even after the effects of salary level, salary increases, performance ratings, job tenure, job satisfaction, and promotions were controlled. The importance of gathering perceptual data on characteristics of the pay system believed to have differential relationships with the subdimensions of pay satisfaction are discussed.     

Hemispheric dominance inferred from Your Style of Learning and Thinking on reports of Necker cube reversals and maze learning

30 subjects volunteered from three sources: community adults (M age = 32.8, SD = 13.4), college adults (M age = 23.8, SD = 8.3), and children (M age = 9.5, SD = 1.7) and were categorized as 'left-' and 'right-dominant' by scores on Your Style of Thinking and Learning. They reported the number of Necker cube reversals perceived in 90 sec., attempted to locate four embedded figures, and blindly traversed a 16-choice point finger maze in that order. 'Right-dominant' subjects located more embedded figures and made fewer errors on the finger maze than did 'left-dominant' subjects. College adults reported more Necker cube reversals than did community adults and children, and community adults reported more reversals than did children. Confounds of performance measures with fatigue and/or practice require further research.     

Personality characteristics of individuals with chronic rheumatoid arthritis

MMPI profiles of 22 chronic arthritic patients were compared to 22 control pain (nonorganic) patients. While elevations were noted in the HS, D, and Hy scales for the rheumatoid patients, the over-all profiles differed from controls on the PA scale.     

Effect of reaction time condition on EMG activities of the biceps brachii muscle in elbow flexion and forearm supination

Under simple- and choice-RT conditions, the biceps brachii muscle was examined in 8 healthy male subjects to determine how the temporal and spatial characteristics of elbow flexion and forearm supination differed at the initial phase of EMG activity and whether preparation or the presence of response uncertainty influenced the EMG outputs of the two movements. In the simple-RT condition, RT of supination was significantly faster than that of flexion but EMG activity of supination was less than that of flexion. In contrast, in the choice-RT condition, RT of flexion was significantly faster than that of supination but EMG activity of flexion was significantly reduced compared to supination. These findings indicate that advanced preparation or motor set facilitates the differentiation of RTs and EMG activities of the response movements and that response uncertainty causes a significant change in the temporal and spatial specificity of both elbow flexion and forearm supination.     

Aggregate item response analysis

A stochastic postulate is given for the multiple-item, successive-intervals scaling of populations. The logistic equivalent of this postulate provides an aggregate item response model in which a unidimensional submodel may be nested. This reduction provides a subtractive conjoint measurement of several items and stimuli on the same latent scale. Generalized-least-squares methods are used to estimate and test the multiple-item model, and its unidimensional reduction, on aggregate survey responses. The entire procedure is illustrated with an analysis of semantic-differential attitude data. This analysis exhibits an item selection procedure that is applicable to various social constructs.The authors dedicate this paper to the memory and contributions of Clyde Coombs.The programming and data analyses for the present paper were carried out by José Ventura of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Jerry Meiten of the Department of Statistics, University of Florida.The study was also supported by the College of Business Administration, University of Florida, and the Faculty of Social Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.     

Test theory without an answer key

A general model is presented for homogeneous, dichotomous items when the answer key is not known a priori. The model is structurally related to the two-class latent structure model with the roles of respondents and items interchanged. For very small sets of respondents, iterative maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters can be obtained by existing methods. For other situations, new estimation methods are developed and assessed with Monte Carlo data. The answer key can be accurately reconstructed with relatively small sets of respondents. The model is useful when a researcher wants to study objectively the knowledge possessed by members of a culturally coherent group that the researcher is not a member of.This research was supported by NSF Grant No. SES-8320173 to the authors. We gratefully acknowledge comments and suggestions from John Boyd, Tarow Indow, and Kathy Maher as well as the editor and several anonymous referees.     

Sample size determinations for the two rater kappa statistic

This paper gives a method for determining a sample size that will achieve a prespecified bound on confidence interval width for the interrater agreement measure,. The same results can be used when a prespecified power is desired for testing hypotheses about the value of kappa. An example from the literature is used to illustrate the methods proposed here.     

A reformulation of the general Euclidean model for the external analysis of preference data

This paper discusses least squares methods for fitting a reformulation of the general Euclidean model for the external analysis of preference data. The reformulated subject weights refer to a common set of reference vectors for all subjects and hence are comparable across subjects. If the rotation of the stimulus space is fixed, the subject weight estimates in the model are uniquely determined. Weight estimates can be guaranteed nonnegative. While the reformulation is a metric model for single stimulus data, the paper briefly discusses extensions to nonmetric, pairwise, and logistic models. The reformulated model is less general than Carroll's earlier formulation.The author is grateful to Christopher J. Nachtsheim for his helpful suggestions.