Needs Analysis and Design Assignment 2: RA 2: Training Document Report

Throughout this course, you learned about the importance of training to improve organizational effectiveness. However, it is even more critical to determine whether training is the best option. Identifying the training need is a critical first step in the training and development process. One needs to tie the deficiency to a business need and ensure that the benefits of conducting the training are likely to resolve the identified problem. For this assignment, you will be tasked with doing just that.

For an organization of your choice, you will create a needs analysis and evaluation report of approximately 10- to 12-pages, which will outline your training recommendations for management. Refer to the discussed theories (i.e., expectancy theory or social learning theory) and prior articles for guidance in completing this assignment.

Directions:

For your report of 10- to 12-pages:

1. Choose an OrganizationSelect an organization. It can be either a recent employer or a business where you may have volunteered. Identify a particular department in which you have experience.
   • If you cannot identify an organization, consider a fictitious organization well known for a popular product. Reviewing the literature may help in giving you ideas in creating your organization. Identify an issue that is impacting efficiency and productivity (for instance, it could be a well-known telecom company where sales have been down due to poor customer service). The company has hired you as a consultant to do a needs assessment. Improvise where appropriate and provide complete details of the organization and the identified issue for which you have been brought in.
2. Create a Training Needs Analysis ReportCreate a set of ten to fifteen interview questions to ask managers and employees. The questions should address all of the necessary sections to complete the training needs analysis report.
   If possible, schedule time to conduct observations.
   Required Information for the Training Needs Analysis Report:
   • Background Information: Include information about the organization and the issue you have identified or for which you were consulted.
   • Number of Employees: Identify the number of employees to be trained and their current skill levels.
   • Locations of Employees: Identify where the employees to be trained are located.
   • Interview Data: Interview at least one manager and one employee and summarize managerial and employee feedback on current performance and identified skill gaps. Include your list of questions and answers.
   • Observational Data: Observe at least one or two employees performing the job for which training will be created and include a log of your personal observations.
   • Training Sponsor: Identify the requestor and the approver of the training (may be a single person or two separate individuals).
   • Identification of Training Needs: Include the following in your conclusion:
   • Perform Performance Analysis: If training has been identified due to a performance problem (errors at work, etc.), conduct an analysis to confirm whether a training remedy can resolve the skill deficiency. If not, suggest other strategies that management can use to solve the problem without training (i.e., improving communication on what is expected of employees).
   • Identify Insufficient Knowledge or Skills: List specific knowledge or skills that are deficient (lack of knowledge of products, lack of skills in operating specific software, etc.).
   • Identify the Business Need: Summarize the business need impacted by the identified knowledge or skill deficiency.
   • Identify Cultural or Ethical Considerations: Discuss considerations to be kept in mind when designing the training course.
   • Justification for the Training: Provide your justification for training as the solution to the identified performance problem or skill deficiency:
   • What were the indicators or facts that identify the existence of the issue?
   • What are the possible causes for the existence of the issue?
   • Delivery Dates: Identify when the organization wants to implement the training. Do you think it can be offered in a timely manner? Explain why or why not:
   • Training and Development Department: Assess the company’s training and development department’s role. How will the department be involved?
3. Construct a Design Document ReportNext, construct a design document making your training recommendations for management. A design document should outline your training program at a high level. It should include all the below-listed components. You are to utilize the Design Document Report Template as a guide for organizing your content.
   Click here to download the Design Document Report Template.
   Required Information for a Design Document Report:
   • Course Title: Suggest a course title.
   • Course Description: Explain in three to four sentences the goals of the whole course.
   • Course Objectives: Write four to six objectives using measureable Bloom’s Taxonomy verbs.
   • Course Topics: Include three to five main topics with three to five subtopics for at least three modules.
   • Activities: Include one suggested activity for each module (simulation, case study, etc.) that directly links to all objectives (three in total). Explain how you incorporated ethical or diversity-related considerations.
   • Module Time Frame: Provide an approximate time frame within which the participant has to complete each module (e.g., in class or online).
   • Course Time Frame: Provide an approximate time frame within which the participant has to complete the full course (e.g., the number of hours or days).
   • Delivery Approach: Recommend a suggested delivery method for the whole course (instructor-led, online, blended, etc.).
   • Delivery Approach Justification: Justify your training delivery approach recommendation, along with a comparison of two to three different delivery options based on learning theories, training research, organizational requirements, and individual needs.
   • Risks: Identify any project risks or concerns that could affect the success of this training (budget, timelines, buy-in, etc.).
   • Follow-Up: Analyze the different methods available for follow-up to ensure transfer of training. Determine the preferred method and justify your decision referencing scholarly resources.
   • Evaluation: Construct an evaluation for the training using Kirkpatrick’s model and discuss it.

Your final product will be a Microsoft Word document of approximately 10- to 12-pages in length and utilize four scholarly sources in your research (beyond your textbook). Your paper should be written in a clear, concise, and organized manner; demonstrate ethical scholarship in accurate representation and attribution of sources; and display accurate spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

design a quasi or a true experimental study, investigating the impact of the independent variable on the dependent variable.

Address the following in 500-750 words:

1. Design either a quasi or experimental study to investigate the variables. What is the hypothesis? Describe the types of hypotheses with respect to testing. What does the experimental method allow that the correlation design does not?

   Violent Video Games and Physical Aggression: Evidence for a Selection Effect Among Adolescents

   Johannes Breuer University of Münster

   Jens Vogelgesang University of Erfurt

   Thorsten Quandt University of Münster

   Ruth Festl University of Münster and University of

   Hohenheim

   Longitudinal studies investigating the relationship of aggression and violent video games are still scarce. Most of the previous studies focused on children or younger adolescents and relied on convenience samples. This paper presents data from a 1-year longitudinal study of N � 276 video game players aged 14 to 21 drawn from a representative sample of German gamers. We tested both whether the use of violent games predicts physical aggression (i.e., the socialization hypothesis) and whether physical aggression predicts the subsequent use of violent games (i.e., the selection hypothesis). The results support the selection hypotheses for the group of adolescents aged 14 to 17. For the group of young adults (18 –21), we found no evidence for both the socialization and the selection hypothesis. Our findings suggest that the use of violent video games is not a substantial predictor of physical aggression, at least in the later phases of adolescence and early adulthood. The differences we found between the age groups show that age plays an important role in the relationship of aggression and violent video games and that research in this area can benefit from a more individu- alistic perspective that takes into account both intraindividual developmental change and interindividual differences between players.

   Keywords: video games, violence, aggression, adolescents, young adults

   From the earliest investigations into the rela- tionship of video game1 use and aggression in the 1980s (Cooper & Mackie, 1986; Dominick, 1984; Silvern & Williamson, 1987; Winkel, Novak, & Hopson, 1987) until today, hundreds

   of experimental and correlational studies have been conducted. Despite the large number of studies, the debate about the link between video games and aggression is ongoing, not only in politics and the mass media, but also within academia (Bushman & Huesmann, 2014; Elson & Ferguson, 2014a, 2014b; Krahé, 2014; War- burton, 2014). While all of the available meta- analyses (Anderson et al., 2010; Ferguson, 2007; Ferguson & Kilburn, 2009; Sherry, 2001, 2007) found a relationship between aggression and the use of (violent) video games, the size and interpretation of this connection differ largely between these studies; as do the defini-

   1 We use the term video games as an umbrella term that includes all types of digital games, whether they are played on a PC, home consoles, handhelds, or mobile devices. We decided to use “video game” because it is the most common term in the literature and it is easier to read than the composite “computer and video games” or the more aca- demic denomination “digital games.”

   This article was published Online First February 16, 2015.

   Johannes Breuer, Department of Communication, Uni- versity of Münster; Jens Vogelgesang, Department of Com- munication, University of Erfurt; Thorsten Quandt, Depart- ment of Communication, University of Münster; Ruth Festl, Department of Communication, University of Münster, and Department of Communication, University of Hohenheim.

   The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Pro- gramme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement number 240864 (SOFOGA).

   Correspondence concerning this article should be ad- dressed to Johannes Breuer, Department of Communication, University of Münster, Bispinghof 9-14, 48143 Münster, Germany. E-mail: johannes.breuer@uni-muenster.de

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   Psychology of Popular Media Culture © 2015 American Psychological Association 2015, Vol. 4, No. 4, 305–328 2160-4134/15/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000035

   305

    

   mailto:johannes.breuer@uni-muenster.de

   http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000035

    

   tions and measurement of violent content and aggression in the studies that were included in these meta-analyses. In addition, some meta- analyses only found a relationship for aggres- sive thoughts or feelings, but not for aggressive behavior. There is also a controversy about what exactly causes this link and, most impor- tantly, about the direction of the (potential) ef- fects.

   Experimental research on video games and aggression has been criticized for a lack of ecological validity and the unstandardized use of measures of aggression that have not been properly validated (Ferguson & Rueda, 2009; Ferguson, Smith, Miller-Stratton, Fritz, & Hei- nrich, 2008; Ritter & Eslea, 2005; Tedeschi & Quigley, 1996). The issue of the real-world implications of findings from laboratory studies is further complicated by the fact that they can only investigate short-term effects that often only last for a few minutes (Barlett, Branch, Rodeheffer, & Harris, 2009). Cross-sectional correlational research, on the other hand, typi- cally has larger samples, but is unsuitable for making any claims about the direction of the effect. Longitudinal studies combine the advan- tages of cross-sectional and experimental stud- ies, as they use larger samples than most exper- imental studies and allow to sort out the temporal precedence between the variables of interest. Although it is still possible that addi- tional variables are responsible for the temporal order, given a sound control of potentially rel- evant third variables, panel studies allow to make claims about long-term effects that both cross-sectional and experimental research do not allow. Nonetheless, while panel data can help to determine direction and strengths of effects by testing for covariation and controlling for temporal order, only controlled experiments provide the means to actually prove causality (Finkel, 1995). Compared with the abundance of cross-sectional survey studies and experi- mental research, panel studies on video games and aggression are still scarce. The meta- analysis by Anderson et al. (2010), for example, included 34 effect sizes from longitudinal stud- ies2 and Ferguson and Kilburn (2009) used data from five longitudinal studies. While several longitudinal studies use a composite score for media violence that includes video games (e.g., Ferguson, Ivory, & Beaver, 2013; Gentile, Coyne, & Walsh, 2011; Krahé, Busching, &

   Möller, 2012; Krahé & Möller, 2010; Ostrov, Gentile, & Crick, 2006), there are relatively few that look specifically at the effects of video games. Among those studies that explicitly in- vestigate video games, some only look at rela- tively brief periods of several months, and al- most all studies rely on convenience samples and focus on children or adolescents.

   In longitudinal research on media violence and aggression, there are two seemingly com- peting hypotheses. The socialization hypothesis states that the repeated use of violent media leads to an increase of aggression over time, whereas the selection hypothesis is based on the idea of selective exposure (Zillmann & Bryant, 1985) and posits that individuals who are more aggressive will tend to choose (more) violent media content. The downward spiral model (Slater, Henry, Swaim, & Anderson, 2003) combines these hypotheses by proposing that individuals higher in trait aggression will choose more violent media content, which, in turn, increases their level of aggression. As with the experimental and cross-sectional studies, evidence from longitudinal studies on the rela- tionship between (violent) video games and ag- gression is mixed at best. Some studies found a media effect (Anderson et al., 2008; Hopf, Hu- ber, & Wei�, 2008; Möller & Krahé, 2009), while others report selection effects (von Salisch, Vogelgesang, Kristen, & Oppl, 2011), provide evidence for both (Slater et al., 2003), or found no effects (Ferguson, 2011; Ferguson, Garza, Jerabeck, Ramos, & Galindo, 2013; Fer- guson, San Miguel, Garza, & Jerabeck, 2012; Wallenius & Punamäki, 2008; Williams & Skoric, 2005).

   A limitation of the previous longitudinal studies is that almost all of them rely on con- venience samples that are mostly composed of students from elementary schools, high schools, or colleges located in the areas where the re- spective researchers are based. Most studies also focus on specific grades, thereby reducing the age range of participants. In addition, even longitudinal studies often only test one direction of effects; mostly the socialization hypothesis.

   2 Anderson et al. (2010) do not report the number of longitudinal studies in their paper. This number should be substantially lower than the number of effect sizes, as most longitudinal studies include cross-sectional and longitudinal effects (often also for different dependent variables).

   306 BREUER, VOGELGESANG, QUANDT, AND FESTL

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