Article critique and evaluation methods

Trainee Motivation

Within the United States and England, companies spend billions of dollars annually on training employees. An accompanying challenge of training employees is the level of motivation of the employee. Employees who are highly motivated to participate in the training experience demonstrate higher levels of satisfaction with the training. Additionally, they demonstrate higher levels of assimilation of the skills provided during the training process. Orpen (1999) address the lacunae in the literature where there is limited examination of the factors that influence employee motivation.

The researcher examines the relationship between training environment and employee motivation and perceived training quality. Using a model engaging four personal and five corporate aspects of the training environment, the researcher assesses the relationship and interaction between these aspects and motivation and perceived training quality. The personal and corporate factors were hypothesized to have a significant influence on the state of the employee's motivation and perception of training quality.

The study utilized 105 manager employees from 12 different private organizations across Australia. The number of respondents who were employed by the same firm ranged from 2 to 11. The job content of the participants was highly varied but they were all at the same position within their respective organizations. The organizations also had very similar structures. The participants were asked to complete a questionnaire based on their experience with the organizational training provided by their firm. This assessment was conducted at the job site of the employee.

The results of the study showed that the personal aspects of the training environment had limited influence on trainee motivation. From the list of predictors that were associated with personal aspects, only organizational commitment demonstrated a significant correlation. All of the predictors from the organizational aspects of the model showed a significant correlation with the dependent variables. The statistical analysis of the author was limited to the use of correlations, means, and standard deviations. This is possibly the first weakness of this work. The author noted that many of the aspects may be related to each other and consequently they would measure similar constructs. The statistical analysis did not examine the variables for multicollinearity, which could be a significant impediment in a research of this nature.

However, the work clearly articulated the missing area of knowledge to which it would contribute. While the literature review was sparse, the supporting research chosen supported the approach the author utilized. The language used by the author was simple yet not overly simplistic. The general readability of the piece was quite high and reading it was enjoyable. The works awakened multiple questions in the mind of the reader, which would be resolved by further research.

The use of a quantitative research design was appropriate for the questions that the researcher asked. The researcher was interested in the relationship between two variables. The examination of relationship requires the collection of numerical data. The questionnaire as the data collection instrument allowed the researcher to collect data that was reliable based on the Chronbach alpha coefficients presented in the work. A methodological weakness in the work may have been the sample size. The researcher did not provide error values for the sample that was used. This is noted because with small sample size it is possible that the data would contain high levels of systematized error.