Training Instruments and Tools

A training instrument differs from a test in that the answers to the questions are not considered right or wrong . Many of the instruments included here are assessments and self-assessments - instruments that ask participants for information about perceptions of others or themselves. Training instruments differ from evaluations in that instruments address the question, How much? and evaluations ask, How well? The instruments in this chapter focus on what we have found to be the most important aspects of supervision.

Can training instruments be reliable or valid if they tend to enquire about perceptions, instead of looking for right answers? There seems to be much confusion regarding this question. Some trainers believe they should look for some magic quality called validity in the information gathered through training instruments. But the major benefit of training instruments is their usefulness, not their predictive power. Training instruments are designed to facilitate learning, not to help with personnel issues or promotion decisions. Their primary use is to generate data for action planning and to help learners focus on the most important aspects of a training session. For a more thorough discussion of training instruments, see the article by Jones and Bearley, Reliability and Validity for Training Instruments' (1998).