title: Enhancing the training process in the public sector of the United Arab Emirates with special reference to training needs assessment, objective development, trainees selection and evaluation
Creators: name: Qefel, Mohammed Ahmed Ebrahim Ahmed Bu
Publisher: name: University of Glasgow
Year: 1998
Subjects: subject: Vocational education, Middle Eastern studies.

description: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and investigate the barriers from both an academic and practical perspective, towards vocational training process in particular training needs assessment (TNA), training objective development, trainee selection methodologies, and programme evaluation. These are examined within the context of the public sector of the United Arab Emirates, in the form of the government agencies (recipients) and the training programme provider, namely the Institute of Administrative Development (IAD). This is augmented by, and integrated with a comparative study employing contemporary available research materials relating to the research world wide. Field research involved conducting an extensive programme of questionnaire and interview studies. The researcher delivered questionnaires to three groups: trainees who graduated from IAD after two months of training; the immediate supervisors of trainees; and the training officers. Of the 349 trainee questionnaires distributed, 174 were collected, of which 170 were used in the final analysis. A total of 109 questionnaires were distributed to the trainees' immediate supervisors, 67 replies were collected. Twenty four training officer questionnaires were collected, covering 15 ministries out of the 21. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 8 out of 9 staff members of the Institute of Administrative Development. A descriptive statistical analysis approach has been adopted which is in keeping with the nature of the study. Based on the findings of the above studies, the principal conclusions that have been derived from this research reveal the following: a lack of effort was put into identifying the trainees' needs prior to attending programmes, by both the government agencies and the IAD; limited TNA methodologies were employed which do not produce reliable results; training programme objectives were not determined according to the trainees development requirements: there were no formalised criteria for selecting trainees to attend the programmes provided by IAD; no effort was made by the ministries and IAD to evaluate the relevancy and adequacy of training programmes to job performance within the work place. The critical factors inhibiting the adoption of training needs assessment (TNA), training objective development, trainee selection methodologies, and effective programme evaluation were as follow: training personnel's lack of, or limited, skills in programme design; lack of resources including training personnel, and insufficient training budget; socio-cultural values, such as personal ties within the organisation, which tend to influence the way trainees are selected to attend programmes, and how they were appraised within their organisations: in general, a lack of awareness of the importance of training process. The comparative findings indicate that some European public sectors put more effort into conducting TNA and programme evaluation than the UAE. In the Arab context, it was found that Oman's government agencies have made more attempts to evaluate programme effectiveness than the UAE. The study also indicates that the Jordanian public sector adopts a wider range of methods for TNA than the UAE. The way training programme objectives are developed by IADTS is similar to that of the Bangladesh government training institutes. In the final chapter valuable recommendations are made which should assist decision makers and practitioners to achieve more successful implementation of TNA, training objective development, trainee selection methodologies, and programme evaluation.