Problems in Measuring the Effectiveness of Professional Education

Abstract

IN the process of completing a recent study of the effectiveness of one area of professional education, a number of problems arose that may well be of interest to others planning investigations of a similar nature. For this reason, this article has been prepared to describe some of these problems and the methods by which they were met. The study concerned was made to ascertain the effectiveness of college training for executives in retailing in terms of selected objectives determined to be desirable. To do this, the performance of retailing graduates in respect to these objectives was measured by means of an achievement examination and compared with the performance of other groups.Selecting Groups for Comparison A question arose at this point of what groups to use for purposes of comparison. It was recognized that, as in other areas of professional and vocational education, objectives thought to be desirable might very possibly be attained by means of work experience as well as through formal college training. A study of this nature could be helpful in identifying those objectives that could best be taught by means of formal college training and those for which work experience itself was best suited.In appraising the effectiveness of formal training, it was thus necessary to take into consideration both formal training and work experience as factors to be measured in respect to achievement of the selected objectives. In order to have these two factors appear in all possible combinations, it was necessary to find subjects in each of these four groups: (i) no training, no work experience, (2) training, no work experience, (3) work at OAKLAND UNIV on July 1, 2015 epm.sagepub.com Downloaded from