Multidimensional Skills Research Articles

A Cognitive Diagnosis Model for Continuous Response

Nondichotomous response models have been of greater interest in recent years due to the increasing use of different scoring methods and various performance measures. As an important alternative to dichotomous scoring, the use of continuous response formats has been found in the literature. To assess finer-grained skills or attributes and to extract information with diagnostic value from continuous response data, a multidimensional skills diagnosis model for continuous response is proposed. An expectation-maximization implementation of marginal maximum likelihood estimation is developed to estimate its parameters. The viability of the proposed model is shown via a simulation study and a real data example. The proposed model is also shown to provide a substantial improvement in attribute classification when compared to a model based on dichotomized continuous responses.

The Relevance of Social Sciences Teacher Education Programme in Preparing Effective Secondary School Educators

In Mauritius, the teaching of social studies presents educators with a unique set of challenges, as they are expected to have multi-disciplinary knowledge and multi-dimensional skills to be effective in classrooms. Many of these social studies educators have undertaken the PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education) course offered by the Mauritius Institute of Education (MIE), which is the leading teacher training institute in the country. This paper explores the relevance of the social sciences teacher education programme offered by the MIE in preparing secondary school educators to meet the challenges in their practice in the wake of current curricular reforms. The study used focus group discussions as the main tool to gather in depth views of the participants. Preliminary findings tend to show that although educators may possess skills, lack of mastery in multi-disciplinary knowledge influences their proficiency in classrooms. An analysis of the different modules of the social sciences programme also shows a gap between the educators' needs and the modules offered.

The Trifurcation of the Labor Markets in the Networked, Knowledge-Driven, Global Economy

This conceptual, interdisciplinary paper will start with an introduction to the new, networked, knowledge-driven, global economy. The objective of this paper, using a narrative review of the economic, business, and management literature of labor markets and human capital, will be to negate the notion that we have, at present, one labor market for human capital, and will conjecture that we currently have (or are about to have) three autonomous markets for labor that are driven by different market dynamics and mechanisms. The three markets are identified as follows: routine labor, skilled labor, and talent. Each one of the markets will then be discussed, including future trends, issues, and remedies. This trifurcation of the labor markets is mostly the combined result of phase transition resulting from three major impetuses. The first is the effect(s) that technological revolutions have on the supply and demand of/for multidimensional skills of human capital. Second is the “winner take all” market structure enabled by the “industrial” economy’s framed legislation and social norms. The third impetus is the context (for the technological revolutions and the nature of the markets) of a networked global economy that is driven by knowledge developing at an accelerated pace. The narrative multidisciplinary literature review used was a modified version of the integrative literature review. The review confirmed that the three labor markets’ dynamics are to a considerable degree dissimilar and that legislating, conducting monetary, and fiscal policies that treat them as one labor market could (and probably already does) cause more harm than good, resulting in destabilizing the labor markets (as indicated by the growing unemployment rate of the young generation worldwide) and by extension, the social fabric of the new economy (as indicated by the growing economic and educational inequality worldwide). The paper concludes with a framework of the three labor markets, followed by a summary, including the need for a new legal and social paradigm regarding labor and the need for a new formal model for value creation. Finally, the limitations of the study as well as potential research gaps are identified.

New Skills, New Jobs: Return Migration, Skill Transfers, and Business Formation in Mexico.

Numerous studies have documented a high propensity for self-employment and business formation among return migrants relative to non-migrants. The literature points to the importance of remitted savings, migration duration, and number and types of jobs abroad for business formation upon return. Implicit in this scholarship is the assumption that migrants acquire not only financial capital, but also human capital, which expands their opportunities upon return. Empirical work has demonstrated how the transfer of formal human capital, such as language skills and professional credentials, influences the mobility pathways of professional return migrants. More recent research has also found that the transfer of informal human capital, such as social and technical skills learned on the job, shape the mobility pathways of return migrants with little schooling. Absent from this scholarship, however, are studies that directly test the relationship between the transfer of informal human capital and the odds of business formation among return migrants. In this paper, we address this gap. Using a multidimensional skills variable, which includes social, technical, and English language competences, we measure and test the relationship between skill acquisition and transfer and business formation among return migrants. Drawing on findings from a survey of 200 return migrants and 200 non-migrants in Mexico, we show that return migrants who successfully acquire and transfer new skills across the migratory circuit often leverage their new knowledge to launch businesses. Our findings have wide implications for how social scientists conceptualize and measure human capital formation across the migratory circuit.

Multidimensional Skill Mismatch

What determines the earnings of a worker relative to his peers in the same occupation? What makes a worker fail in one occupation but succeed in another? More broadly, what are the factors that determine the productivity of a worker-occupation match? To help answer questions like these, we propose an empirical measure of multidimensional skill mismatch that is based on the discrepancy between the portfolio of skills required by an occupation and the portfolio of abilities possessed by a worker for learning those skills. This measure arises naturally in a dynamic model of occupational choice and human capital accumulation with multidimensional skills and Bayesian learning about one’s ability to learn skills. Not only does mismatch depress wage growth in the current occupation, it also leaves a scarring effect—by stunting skill acquisition—that reduces wages in future occupations. Mismatch also predicts different aspects of occupational switching behavior. We construct the empirical analog of our skill mismatch measure from readily available US panel data on individuals and occupations and find empirical support for these implications. The magnitudes of these effects are large: moving from the worst- to best-matched decile can improve wages by 11 percent per year for the rest of one’s career. (JEL E24, J24, J31, J41)

Multidimensional Skill Mismatch

What determines the earnings of a worker relative to his peers in the same occupation? What makes a worker fail in one occupation but succeed in another? More broadly, what are the factors that determine the productivity of a worker-occupation match? In this paper, we propose an empirical measure of skill mismatch for a worker-occupation match, which sheds light on these questions. This measure is based on the discrepancy between the portfolio of skills required by an occupation and the portfolio of abilities possessed by a worker for learning those skills. This measure arises naturally in a dynamic model of occupational choice and human capital accumulation with multidimensional skills and Bayesian learning about one’s ability to learn these skills. In this model, mismatch is central to the career outcomes of workers: it reduces the returns to occupational tenure, and it predicts occupational switching behavior. We construct our empirical analog by combining data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) on workers, and the O*NET on occupations. Our empirical results show that the effects of mismatch on wages are large and persistent: mismatch in occupations held early in life has a strong negative effect on wages in future occupations. Skill mismatch also significantly increases the probability of an occupational switch and predicts its direction in the skill space. These results provide fresh evidence on the importance of skill mismatch for the job search process.

Empirical Validation of Listening Proficiency Guidelines

AbstractBecause listening has received little attention and the validation of ability scales describing multidimensional skills is always challenging, this study applied a multistage, criterion‐referenced approach that used a framework of aligned audio passages and listening tasks to explore the validity of the ACTFL and related listening proficiency guidelines. Rasch measurement and statistical analyses of data generated in seven separate language studies resulted in significant differences in listening difficulty between the proficiency levels tested and confirmed the validity of the ACTFL proficiency assessment for listening.

Academic Counselling In Odl: Information System For Capacity Building Of Academic Counselors’ In Ignou

Indira Gandhi national Open University (IGNOU) is an apex body for open and distance learning (ODL) system in India. The university has nation-wide operation and pioneer in distance education. IGNOU has an hqrs, 67 Regional Centres and about 3400 Study Centres throughout India. The study centres are the academic contact point for distance learners and the university engages around 54,000 academic counsellors for giving learner support to the heterogeneous distance learners. In IGNOU, the academic counsellors are mostly drawn from the formal higher educational system and the exposure towards ODL system therefore, is minimal. However, the academic counsellors are the pivotal link between the ODL institution and isolated distance learners in IGNOU. Their role in handling face-to-face academic counseling sessions at the study centre is very important. The academic counsellors in IGNOU are drawn from the conventional system of higher education. Though, periodical training is given to them by IGNOU, it is a difficult task to train such a massive number of counsellors across the country. In fact the role of an academic counsellor is multifarious and requires both tutoring and counseling. For maintaining quality in academic counseling, the accumulation of multi-dimensional skills, attributes and information is essential on the part of the cunsellor in ODL. Among these, possessing information at various levels about ODL system is an enabling factor to effectively support isolated distance learner. Therefore, a comprehensive Information System is felt the need of the hour for the capacity building of the academic counsellors in supporting distance learners and for the quality assurance process. This work explores and builds a comprehensive information system for the academic counsellors in an ODL system, keeping IGNOU as the context.

Adopted and Biological Children: Examining the ABCs of Multidimensional Skills in Intergenerational Human Capital Transmission

While many studies have shown that parental skills are important for child outcomes, whether this derives from non-genetic mechanisms is less clear. We investigate the nurture effects of parental cognitive and socio-emotional skills in producing college attainment of offspring, modelling socio-emotional skills as latent factors based on the Big Five taxonomy of personality. By studying a sample of adopted children whose parents are respondents of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, we identify non-genetic effects of parental skills on college attainment and find that they are sizeable, with IQ, Openness, and Agreeableness being the most important skills. We uncover substantial heterogeneity in effects across parent-child relationships by gender. We argue that our estimates are plausibly robust to non-random adoption assignment after accounting for institutional policies regarding the adoption process and the compositional change of adoptees in Wisconsin during the period covered by our sample.

Employability skills of LIS graduates in Pakistan: needs and expectations

PurposeThis paper aims to analyze the opinion of young and senior library and information science (LIS) professionals in Pakistan on LIS curricula and its relevance to market needs to enhance employability.Design/methodology/approachA mixed research method was used to collect data from professionals through two questionnaires, focus group and personal experiences.FindingsThe findings reveal that the LIS curriculum offered at the University of the Punjab (PU) is up to date and well designed but it is not fully meeting the needs of young graduates and employers. Both groups were dissatisfied with employability skills due to lack of implementation of LIS curricula and shortage of specialized faculty members at the time of data collection in May 2008. The employers complained of weak communication, practical and presentation skills. They expect graduates with more multidimensional and market oriented skills. However, the school takes a lead in introducing new curricula among the rest.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper only focuses on the graduates of Department of LIS, University of the Punjab, among the eight library schools in Pakistan.Practical implicationsThe study divulges very valuable information for the planning and revision of the LIS curriculum and change in teaching practices in all eight library schools of Pakistan. It will also be helpful for LIS graduates to learn more market oriented and multi dimensional skills to meet the changing demands of the information marketplace and enhance their employability.Originality/valueThis is first ever study in any library school of Pakistan about the employability skills of its graduates.

Multi-dimensional skills, specialization, and oligopolistic competition in higher education

This paper develops a differentiated products model of school competition that distinguishes among different dimensions that matter in the skill acquisition process. The model predicts that when identical schools compete for students, specialization may arise as a competition strategy. This serves rich students' education goals well. Poorer students, however, may attend schools with specializations that do not cater to their relative strengths. By doing so, these poorer students complement the weaknesses of the richer students through peer effects and receive financial aid in return. The empirical analysis provides strong support for the model's predictions about within-school implications of specialization.

A practical illustration of multidimensional diagnostic skills profiling: Comparing results from confirmatory factor analysis and diagnostic classification models

In recent years there has been an increasing international interest in fine-grained diagnostic inferences on multiple skills for formative purposes. A successful provision of such inferences that support meaningful instructional decision-making requires (a) careful diagnostic assessment design coupled with (b) empirical support for the structure of the assessment grounded in multidimensional scaling models. This paper investigates the degree to which multidimensional skills profiles of children can be reliably estimated with confirmatory factor analysis models, which result in continuous skill profiles, and diagnostic classification models, which result in discrete skill profiles. The data come from a newly developed diagnostic assessment of arithmetic skills in elementary school that was specifically designed to tap multiple skills at different levels of definitional grain size.

FITTING THE STRUCTURED GENERAL DIAGNOSTIC MODEL TO NAEP DATA

ABSTRACTXu and von Davier (2006) demonstrated the feasibility of using the general diagnostic model (GDM) to analyze National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) proficiency data. Their work showed that the GDM analysis not only led to conclusions for gender and race groups similar to those published in the NAEP Report Card, but also allowed flexibility in estimating multidimensional skills simultaneously. However, Xu and von Davier noticed that estimating the latent skill distributions will be much more challenging with this model when there is a large number of subgroups to estimate. To make the GDM more applicable to NAEP data analysis, which requires a fairly large subgroups analysis, this study developed a log‐linear model to reduce the number of parameters in the latent skill distribution without sacrificing the accuracy of inferences. This paper describes such a model and applies the model in the analysis of NAEP reading assessments for 2003 and 2005. The comparisons between using this model and the unstructured model were made through the use of various results, such as the differences between item parameter estimates and the differences between estimated latent class distributions. The results in general show that using the log‐linear model is efficient.

Old Dogs, New Tricks: Training the Perceptual Skills of Senior Tennis Players

The purpose of the study was to determine whether multidimensional perceptual-cognitive skills training, including situational awareness, anticipation, and decision making, improves on-court performance in older adults when compared with a physical training program, including stroke and footwork development. Senior tennis players (N = 27) were randomly assigned to one of three groups: perceptual-cognitive skills training, technique-footwork training, or no training. Results indicated that participants receiving perceptual-cognitive skills training had significantly faster response speeds, higher percentage of accurate responses, and higher percentage of performance decision making in posttest match situations. Findings provide clear evidence that perceptual-cognitive skills can be trained in aged individuals. Implications and suggestions for future research are offered.

Education, Mobility and Employers' Monopsony Power: A Search-theoretic Analysis

Abstract. We analyse the efficiency of schooling choices in a wage-posting search equilibrium model with on-the-job search. The workers have multidimensional skills and the search market is segmented by technology. Education determines the scope — or adaptability— of individual skills. Individuals obtain schooling to leave unemployment more quickly and to climb the wage ladder rapidly through job-to-job mobility — that is, to speed up job shopping. Education reduces firms’ monopsony power in the wage determination by improving workers’ mobility. As a result, the wage distribution shifts rightward with aggregate schooling. However, the ratio of vacant jobs to job seekers also falls in each sector. Either one or the other externality may dominate, implying, respectively, under- or over-education. A combination of minimum wage and schooling fee can decentralize the efficient allocation.

Adaptability, productivity, and educational incentives in a matching model

We study the connections between the labour market and the education sector in a matching framework with ex-post wage bargaining. Workers have multidimensional skills and the search market is segmented by technology. Education is a time-consuming activity and determines jointly the scope – or adaptability – and intensity – or productivity – of individual skills. We establish three main results. First, unemployment provides incentives to schooling by raising the need for adaptability. Second, private returns to productivity are below social returns, but no hold-up phenomenon is involved. Third, due to wage and congestion externalities, private returns to adaptability exceed social returns. As a consequence, both over- and under-education may take place in equilibrium.

Recruiting Strategies in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Market conditions have a tremendous influence on recruiting strategies and recruiting incentives used by pharmaceutical companies. In today’s ever changing market, many companies rely upon individuals with multidimensional skills to act as liaisons across various functional groups such as product development, marketing, economics, and clinical sciences. When markets are tight, many pharmaceutical companies work in conjunction with recruiting firms to develop high-profile recruitment packages targeted toward new graduates. This study specifically examines the use of recruitment firms as a strategy to locate and attract talented individuals to the pharmaceutical industry. Telephone interviews with key individuals in departments having direct involvement with recruitment were conducted. Results revealed that pharmaceutical companies devote considerable effort, time, and resources to recruitment activities. In addition to the strategies and incentives provided by companies, we provide recommendations to improve recruitment efforts and to decrease costs associated with recruitment.

Excess Worker Reallocation

Workers face a trade-off between macroeconomic and individual incentives to work in different occupations/industries; namely, between search frictions and personal comparative advantages. Workers endowed with heterogeneous multi-dimensional skills search for jobs that require different skill combinations. In equilibrium, specialized individuals contact few, selected types of vacancies, where they are likely to be hired; those with weak comparative advantages are seldom chosen among competing applicants, thus seek any job type. In a tight labour market, comparative advantages dominate waiting costs: offsetting labour mobility across industries/occupations—Excess Worker Reallocation—is lower and matches are more successful, consistently with direct and indirect evidence.

Naloxone infusion and drainage of cerebrospinal fluid as adjuncts to postoperative care after repair of thoracoabdominal aneurysms

The mechanisms that produce paraplegia in patients after TAA repair are complex and involve alterations in regional blood flow to the spinal cord, CSF dynamics, and reperfusion. Although neither the minimal level of blood flow nor the maximal spinal cord pressure that can be tolerated by the spinal cord is known, adjuncts such as CSF drainage and naloxone infusions may allow longer durations of aortic cross-clamping before irreversible ischemia occurs. Because paraplegia is multifactorial and none of the recommended adjuncts alone provides complete protection of the spinal cord, a combination of treatments may be necessary to reduce the prevalence of neurological complications after thoracoabdominal aortic reconstruction. Critical care nurses thus must be acquainted with the advanced monitoring techniques and the pathophysiology behind these new treatment modalities. Advanced assessment skills are also essential to recognize the potential neurological complications that may occur in these patients. Care of patients with TAA is a challenge. Critical care nurses must use multidimensional skills in the areas of hemodynamic monitoring, physical assessment, and psychological counseling to effectively manage postoperative care of these patients.

Individual Differences and Consistency of Performance During the Acquisition of a Complex Skill

Acquisition of complex multidimensional skills as presented by the MTPB was examined in this investigation. Results indicate individual differences in the acquisition of tasks as measured within this multiple-task battery. In addition, subjects had different acquisition rates across tasks. An additional finding was that there was a fair degree of consistency with respect to the subjects’ relative level of performance on the different tasks at any given point in training.