Clustering of skills and occupations: A generic skills approach to occupational training

A report on the process and procedures of determining generic occupational skills and clusters of occupations for optimal occupational training needs is presented. Four hundred and ninety workers and their supervisors representing 37 different occupations were interviewed using a structured questionnaire consisting of items on mathematics, communication, reasoning, and interpersonal and manipulative skills. Respondents were asked to indicate whether a specific skill was a prerequisite to enter a job and also whether that specific skill was required on the job. Six, three, and two hierarchical skill factors and nine occupational clusters were identified. Training and curricular implications were explored.     

Job attachment,satisfaction, and turnover among public sector employees

This study sought (1) to compare the relative predictive powers of job attachment and job satisfaction with respect to turnover among a sample of public employees; and (2) to examine individual and job-related influences on both attitudes. It was found that attachment was a more effective predictor of turnover than overall satisfaction (or any facet of satisfaction), even when the alternative attitude was partialled out. In addition, it was found that individual employee characteristics were more strongly related to attachment than were job characteristics, while the opposite was found for satisfaction. The findings are discussed in the light of previous evidence, and implications are drawn for research in vocational behavior.     

Psychological cost-benefit as an intervening construct in career choice models

A causal model for career choice was outlined, encompassing psychological cost-benefit-profit as a central intervening construct. The model was applied to the career choice (education vs work) after high school graduation and tested on longitudinal data from 173 students. The main problem concerned the relationship among the components in the causal career choice model, using multiple correlation and path analysis as tools. The results showed clear sex differences. For boys, the model was a rather powerful predictor of career choice (R = 0.70), and Psychological profit with regard to continued education had a clear direct effect as well as an indirect effect on career choice. For girls, the predictive validity was low (R = 0.35) and Psychological profit affected career choice only indirectly via Educational aspiration.     

Laterally induced impedance effects in vision

A linear integral equation for a system of mutually impeding points is developed and solved explicitly. Particular solutions are shown to be subharmonic functions for a large class of stimuli. Specialized forms of the general equation presented in this paper occur within a number of mathematical models of Mach bands. In addition to these known spatial properties, our results also show that the time course of this basic equation may be useful in developing models of transient neural activity as well as of temporal psychophysical phenomena, such as the Broca-Sulzer effect. Further, a spatial transfer function much like the low-frequency cutoff of empirically derived modulation transfer functions follows directly from our basic integral equation if the additional assumption of spatial homogeneity is imposed.