Curricula that are related to the specific task requirements of an occupation can be developed using task analysis. The development of task-related curricula should follow these steps: (1) complete a pretask analysis to develop a brief description of the job and to gather data related to the amount of supervision required, the number of coworkers…

The bibliography was compiled in response to requests for background information about the critical incident technique; references were provided by those interested in the technique. Graduate students searching for guidance on the technique should find it useful, as should researchers. The critical incident technique is a method of research…

When subjects are given open-ended stimulus situations allowing for responses at all possible stages of a developmental theory, the stage scores of individuals for each situation can be treated as scores on polychotomous items. Extensions of the concepts of difficulty and discriminating power from the dichotomous case to this ordinal category…

An overview of the Air Force's Research and Development Program for the Improvement of Maintenance Efficiency is provided. First described are the steps found in any detailed task analysis, a process which results in the complete specification of each task involved in an overall maintenance effort. The factors influencing maintenance effectiveness…

Education has become one of America's biggest industries. As a result, the public wants some evidence concerning the quality of the educational program. This booklet was written to delineate the role of assessment as an important aspect of a comprehensive accountability system for the nation's elementary and secondary schools. It describes what…

An approach for developing examinations to assess the proficiency of health care professionals which utilizes a task inventory methodology is described. Examination development is based upon the identification of health care functions which individuals within a specific category of health professional should be skilled in performing. The several…

Ninety-eight undergraduate education majors received a battery of ability tests, measuring general reasoning, associative memory, and trait anxiety and were randomly assigned to three groups--no feedback, feedback, and learner control--for a computer-assisted instruction course on Xenograde systems (an imaginary science). Four state anxiety…

Career education concepts are all closely linked to the occupational cluster, which has become the basic element in career education curriculum development and programing. Procedures for preparing a cluster-based occupational curriculum are presented, including the collection of manpower data and occupational selection. Other components of the…

This paper describes a project designed to: (1) develop a model for determining occupational activity components to be used in any vocational-technical program, (2) produce a list of occupational activity components (tasks) for the occupational roles identified, (3) determine scores, ranks and percentages for each component from each occupational…

Empirical research shows that neither leadership training nor experience increases organizational performance. These disappointing results can be explained by the Contingency Model. This theory postulates that task motivated low esteem for the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) leaders perform best in very favorable and unfavorable situations while…

Resulting from a project in which a curriculum for an occupational therapy program was developed through task analysis, this manual contains guidelines for developing curriculum guides using job analysis data. The development process consists of 13 procedures which are organized into these four categories: (1) Organization of a project staff, (2)…

This paper discusses (1) the tasks of the change agent, (2) the different dimensions of choice the administrator has in specifying the change agent role, and (3) the optimally specified role. A change agent must establish a relationship with a client system, diagnose the client system, select the correct helping role, determine change objectives,…

Efforts to develop a collection of reading test items suitable for measuring adult literacy are described. The project, part of Project I of the Targeted Research and Development Program in Reading, sought to identify characteristics of literacy levels and to define tasks which might be used in a criterion-referenced test to assess possession of…

A model for sequencing tasks in the area of visual perception was developed. This paper reports an attempt to validate the structure of the model. The performance of 50 normal preschool children on a 47 item test was studied. The results obtained support the use of the model as a framework for developing visual perception tasks. (Author)

A study identified competencies needed by a bilingual teacher aide in an elementary school program. The methodology involved (1) use of task analysis in the form of a 341-item questionnaire, which was disseminated to 13l bilingual teacher aides in Arizona to determine both the difficulty and frequency of their tasks, (2) chi-square tests for…