Practitioners and student perceptions of appropriateness and personal preparedness in ASTD competencies for human resource development occupations

This study investigated practitioner and student perceptions of appropriateness and personal preparedness in ASTD competencies for human resource development occupations. The purpose of the investigation was to determine if HRD practitioners and Indiana State University master's degree students perceived the competencies identified by the American Society for Training and Development in the same or different ways. Particular emphases were placed upon perceptions relative to appropriateness and personal preparedness of members overall and in each of the groups for each of four types of competencies: technical, business, interpersonal, and intellectual.; A one-way analysis of the variance and a comparison of means statistical procedures were used to determine the findings in this chapter. Statistics were used to respond to two hypotheses and the research questions advanced in the study. The first analysis of variance revealed that for technical competencies and interpersonal competencies, the perceived appropriateness by HRD master's students were significantly different from ISU students when tested at the .05 level of significance. The second analysis of variance revealed that for technical competencies, business competencies, interpersonal competencies, intellectual competencies and overall competencies, the perceived appropriateness by HRD master's students were significantly different from ISU students when tested at the .05 level of significance. The questions brought forward from chapter 1 revealed that in both questions 1 and 4 the HRD practitioners perceived that each of the competency categories were more appropriate than did the ISU students. The HRD practitioners also perceived that they were more prepared in each of the competency categories than were the ISU students.; The HRD practitioners perceived the most appropriate competency category and the category for which they were most prepared to be the interpersonal competencies. Whereas, the ISU students perceived the most appropriate competency category and the one for which they were most prepared to be the intellectual competencies. Both the practitioners and the students perceived the technical competencies to be least appropriate, and both groups were least prepared in the business competencies.