Methods for clustering occupational tasks to support training decision making

Abstract

Abstract : Estimates of the cost of providing training, in forms ranging from classroom instruction to on-the-job training, are needed to support decisions about who gets trained, when, where, and on what skills. To counter the myriad of uncontrollable factors that may obscure the relationship between manpower, personnel, and training policy changes and organizational outcomes, an organizational simulation of Air Force occupations called the Training Impact Decisions System (TIDES) was developed. An important first step in obtaining these occupation-level outcome estimates in TIDES is to identify groups of tasks with similar knowledge and skill requirements, because economies will be realized when these tasks are trained at the same time. This report compares results from using two different methods to identify groups of Air Force Occupational Survey tasks where these training economies would occur, including methods based on subject matter experts' judgments and statistical clustering using task coperformance. The results from two field applications indicated that the statistical methods could replicate much of the structure of the experts' clusters, and so, could be used to facilitate the process of identifying these task groups. Use of these methods to form task clusters which could be used to support a broad range of training and personnel decisions is also discussed.