| The purpose of the study was to determine the relative importance of 26 specific job competencies for corporate and industrial trainers in Houston as perceived by a select group of Houston executives with supervisory responsibility for trainers. The list of job competency statements was originally rated "important" by trainers who participated in a national survey sponsored by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) in January, 1978.;Research procedures involved developing a questionnaire and selecting a 20 per cent research sample through use of a table of random numbers. The sample of 28 executives included nine representing the petroleum-chemical industry, six from retailing and wholesaling firms, two employed with manufacturing and engineering firms, two others with public service and government organizations, five from banks and insurance companies, three from medical organizations, and one other. All data were gathered through a personal interview by the researcher with each executive.;All 26 competency statements were rated "important" by at least 46.4 per cent of the responses. One statement, "establish, maintain good working relationships with managers," was rated important by all subjects. Eight others were rated "important" by 90 per cent of the subjects. They included "design programs to satisfy needs," "determine program content," "establish objectives," "revise materials, programs on evaluation of feedback," "evaluate training and development needs", "establish program priorities," "counsel with managers, supervisors on training, development," "keep abreast of training, development concepts," and "use discussion techniques." None of the eight organizational factors accounted for differences in the way in which executives rated the competency statements.;Eight organizational factors were examined. They included the type of firm with which the executive was affiliated, number of trainers employed by the firm, education levels attained by the firm's trainers, their average length of time in training, primary training activity in which the trainers were engaged, number of individuals instructed annually by the firm's trainers, average percentage of the trainer's work-day devoted to training activities, and the total number of the firm's employees. Twenty-six trainer job competency statements were also rated by each executive relative to its importance for trainers under his control. Subjects were asked to rate the competencies on the following scale: (1) highly unimportant, (2) moderately unimportant, (3) undecided, (4) moderately important, (5) highly important. |
