Training Evaluation in Virtual Worlds: Development of a Model

Many organizations have adopted virtual worlds (VWs) as a setting for training programs; however, research on appropriate evaluation of training in this new setting is incomplete. In this article, we address this gap by first exploring the unique issues relevant to evaluation faced by training designers working in VWs. At the macro-organizational level, the primary issue faced is an organizational culture unreceptive to or otherwise skeptical of VWs. At the micro-organizational level, two major issues are identified: individual trainees unreceptive to VWs and general lack of experience navigating VWs. All three of these challenges and their interrelationships may lead to poor reactions, learning, and transfer from VW-based training despite strong, pedagogically sound training design. Second, we survey the training evaluation research literature, identifying the most well-supported training evaluation models, discussing the suitability of each for evaluating VW-based training. Third, we propose a new integrative model based upon this literature, incorporating solutions to the unique issues faced in VWs with the most relevant portions of the models discussed earlier. Fourth, broad thematic implications of this model are identified and applied to prior VW literature. Finally, we provide specific recommendations to practitioners and researchers to evaluate their VW-based training fully

Crowdsourcing Job Satisfaction Data: Examining the Construct Validity of Glassdoor.com Ratings

Researchers, practitioners, and job seekers now routinely use crowdsourced data about organizations for both decision-making and research purposes. Despite the popularity of such websites, empirical evidence regarding their validity is generally absent. In this study, we tackled this problem by combining two curated datasets: (a) the results of the 2017 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS), which contains facet-level job satisfaction ratings from 407,789 US federal employees, and which we aggregated to the agency level, and (b) current overall and facet ratings of job satisfaction of the federal agencies contained within FEVS from Glassdoor.com as scraped from the Glassdoor application programming interface (API) within a month of the FEVS survey’s administration. Using these data, we examined convergent validity, discriminant validity, and methods effects for the measurement of both overall and facet-level job satisfaction by analyzing a multitrait-multimethod matrix (MTMM). Most centrally, we provide evidence that overall Glassdoor ratings of satisfaction within US federal agencies correlate moderately with aggregated FEVS overall ratings (r = .516), supporting the validity of the overall Glassdoor rating as a measure of overall job satisfaction aggregated to the organizational level. In contrast, the validity of facet-level measurement was not well-supported. Overall, given varying strengths and weaknesses with both Glassdoor and survey data, we recommend the combined use of both traditional and crowdsourced data on organizational characteristics for both research and practice

High Rate of Severe Fetal Outcomes Associated with Maternal Parvovirus B19 Infection in Pregnancy

Objective. To augment the understanding of parvovirus B19 infection in pregnancy with respect to maternal characteristics and their corresponding fetal outcomes. Study Design. Retrospective case-series of all women referred to Magee-Women_s Hospital with serologically-documented parvovirus B19 infection during pregnancy from 1998–2001. Results. All 25 cases that are available for analysis occurred from January through June. The frequency of cases varied substantially from year to year, with 14 cases in 1998, 0 cases in 1999 and 2000, and 11 cases in 2001. In contrast to previous reports, the minority of women [4/25(16%)] experienced symptoms attributable to parvovirus B-19 infection although 3 of 25 (12%) fetuses developed hydrops fetalis and 4/25 (16%) suffered an intrauterine of fetal death. Conclusions. These findings suggest that parvovirus B19 infection in pregnancy follows seasonal and annual trend variation, may produce a lower frequency of maternal symptoms and a higher fetal loss rate than previously reported. Synopsis. Maternal parvovirus B19 infection follows seasonal and annual variation is often asymptomatic and may have higher fetal loss rates than previously reported. Continued surveillance is warranted

Correcting Misconceptions About Gamification of Assessment: More Than SJTs and Badges

Describing the current state of gamification, Chamorro-Premuzic, Winsborough, Sherman, and Hogan () provide a troubling contradiction: They offer examples of a broad spectrum of gamification interventions, but they then summarize the entirety of gamification as “the digital equivalent of situational judgment tests.” This mischaracterization grossly oversimplifies a rapidly growing area of research and practice both within and outside of industrial–organizational (I-O) psychology. We agree that situational judgment tests (SJTs) can be considered a type of gamified assessment, and gamification provides a toolkit to make SJTs even more gameful. However, the term gamification refers to a much broader and potentially more impactful set of tools than just SJTs, which are incremental, versatile, and especially valuable to practitioners in an era moving toward business-to-consumer (B2C) assessment models. In this commentary, we contend that gamification is commonly misunderstood and misapplied by I-O psychologists, and our goals are to remedy such misconceptions and to provide a research agenda designed to improve both the science and the practice surrounding gamification of human resource processes

Pay for Performance, Satisfaction and Retention in Longitudinal Crowdsourced Research

In the social and cognitive sciences, crowdsourcing provides up to half of all research participants. Despite this popularity, researchers typically do not conceptualize participants accurately, as gig-economy worker-participants. Applying theories of employee motivation and the psychological contract between employees and employers, we hypothesized that pay and pay raises would drive worker-participant satisfaction, performance, and retention in a longitudinal study. In an experiment hiring 359 Amazon Mechanical Turk Workers, we found that initial pay, relative increase of pay over time, and overall pay did not have substantial influence on subsequent performance. However, pay significantly predicted participants\u27 perceived choice, justice perceptions, and attrition. Given this, we conclude that worker-participants are particularly vulnerable to exploitation, having relatively low power to negotiate pay. Results of this study suggest that researchers wishing to crowdsource research participants using MTurk might not face practical dangers such as decreased performance as a result of lower pay, but they must recognize an ethical obligation to treat Workers fairly

Multi-omics of the gut microbial ecosystem in inflammatory bowel diseases.

Inflammatory bowel diseases, which include Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, affect several million individuals worldwide. Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are complex diseases that are heterogeneous at the clinical, immunological, molecular, genetic, and microbial levels. Individual contributing factors have been the focus of extensive research. As part of the Integrative Human Microbiome Project (HMP2 or iHMP), we followed 132 subjects for one year each to generate integrated longitudinal molecular profiles of host and microbial activity during disease (up to 24 time points each; in total 2,965 stool, biopsy, and blood specimens). Here we present the results, which provide a comprehensive view of functional dysbiosis in the gut microbiome during inflammatory bowel disease activity. We demonstrate a characteristic increase in facultative anaerobes at the expense of obligate anaerobes, as well as molecular disruptions in microbial transcription (for example, among clostridia), metabolite pools (acylcarnitines, bile acids, and short-chain fatty acids), and levels of antibodies in host serum. Periods of disease activity were also marked by increases in temporal variability, with characteristic taxonomic, functional, and biochemical shifts. Finally, integrative analysis identified microbial, biochemical, and host factors central to this dysregulation. The study's infrastructure resources, results, and data, which are available through the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Multi'omics Database ( http://ibdmdb.org ), provide the most comprehensive description to date of host and microbial activities in inflammatory bowel diseases