TRAINING DESIGNED TO CHANGE BEHAVIOR AND ATTITUDES :1 The city of Palm Desert, California, decided to provide training to improve employees' attitudes toward their work and to provide them with the skills to be more effective on the job. The two-day seminar involved a number of teaching methods, including a lecture, films, role plays, and group interaction. Among the topics covered were conflict control, listenine, communicating, telephone etiquette, body language, delegation, and taking orders. Throughout the two days, the value of teamwork, creativity, and rational decision making was stressed and integrated into the training. Before the training was instituted, all 55 non-management employees completed a paper and-pencil questionnaire to measure both their attitudes toward the job and their perception of their job behaviors. Supervisors also completed a questionnaire assessing each of their employees. All 55 employees were told that they would be receiving the same two-day seminar. The first set of 34 employees was chosen at random. The 21 employees who did not take the training immediately became a comparison group for evaluating the training. While the first group of employees was sent to the training, the others were pulled off the job, ostensibly to receive training, but they simply took part in exercises not related to any training. Thus, both groups were treated similarly in every way except for the training. Both groups completed attitude surveys immediately after the trained group finished training, Six months later, both groups completed self- report surveys to measure changes in their job behavior. Their supervisors also were asked to complete a similar behavior measure at the six-month mark. The data provided some revealing information. For the trained group, no changes in attitude or behavior were indicated, either by the self-report or by supervisor-reported surveys. This result was also true (but expected) for the group not trained. The Palm Desert case at the beginning of the chapter provides an example of an effort to evaluate using a control group and pre-/post design. Even here, however, problems arose in the way the evaluation was managed. One issue is that learning was not assessed. Only behavioral change was assessed six months after training. We know that the training did not transfer, but we do not know why. If it did not transfer because it was never learned in the first place, what was the reason? Perhaps, there was just too much material to learn in a one-day seminar? Examining the process of developing the training might reveal this problem, and the training could be revised before being implemented. For a small organization, the training was obviously a major undertaking, and a more comprehensive training evaluation might be more advisable. Based on the above mentioned case, examine and explain the evaluation of training? Was training a failure in the palm desert case? (2+2+1 = 5 marks) (35-50 words for each action)