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M.Com. (Industrial Psychology) / A need to develop more economic methods of selecting large numbers of apprentices has arisen in the electricity supply industry. Previous work behaviour cannot be investigated with traditional personnel selection methods because the large majority of applicants have just left school and lacks work experience. Only apprentices of good quality are able to handle the expensive and sophisticated equipment which has resulted from rapid technological development. Of the large numbers of applicants involved made considerable demands on recruitment officers. The need was therefore felt for the development of a valid and reliable pre-selection screening device in the form of a biographical questionnaire. Achievement motivation factors which also play a role in the selection of apprentices for training were also investigated. The purpose of the study can be summarized by the following three goals: to develop a biographical questionnaire which could be used as a screening or pre-selecting instrument to distinguish between potentially good and poor apprentices to identify factors, by means of this questionnaire as well as an achievement motivation questionnaire, which may play a role in the successful training of apprentices. to predict, with the aid of the biographical questionnaire, the achievement motivation questionnaire, a structured interview and a psychometric test battery the success in training of the apprenticeship applicants. The empirical investigation was applied to a sample of 278 apprentices between the ages of 16 and 20 years. Firstly, a biographical questionnaire consisting of 106 items was applied to 173 apprentices in the study. Statistically significant differences between an existing group of good and poor apprentices were calculated for all 106 items using as the criterium the training result (consisting of a theoretical as well as practical mark). The questionnaire was then validated on a separate sample. An achievement motivation questionnaire (PMV) was then applied to 164 apprentices. A Principal factor analysis was applied and two main factors (divided into five sub-factors) were extracted. An analysis of these results revealed no significant differences when other norm groups of differing composition were compared to this group.

The selection interview is frequently regarded as a situation in which communication between the two participants is effected solely through the medium of spoken and heard words. Closer examination reveals it to be a complex interaction involving subtle contents mediated through several channels of communication - visual, olfactory, tactile, kinesthetic (all "non-verbal") as well as the verbal channel. This study examines the effect of information mediated by non-verbal channels of communication upon the selection judgments made by the interviewer. Interviews under normal face-to-face conditions (where non-verbal communication channels are open) were compared with interviews by another interviewer of the same candidates over a telephone (where non-verbal communication is eliminated). Three interviewers participated, and they, and the order of conditions, were randomized to control order and interviewer effects. The forty-three pairs of interviews were conducted by regular Naval Recruiting Officers upon applicants for officer training in the R.C.N. Results of the interviews were actually used for selection. The principal hypothesis, that assessment ratings by the interviewer are influenced by information communicated through non-verbal channels, was supported: the assessments of 10 of the 22 separate attributes rated showed significant differences between telephone and face-to-face condition. The single overall rating of each candidate which represents the interviewers recommendation to higher authority, did not, however, show a statistically significant difference as made under the two conditions. A secondary hypothesis, that overall assessments made in the face-to-face condition will correlate highly with assessments of appearance and bearing, while overall assessments based on the telephone interview will not, was supported. This suggests that at least one kind of information communicated through non-verbal channels, namely, the appearance and bearing of the candidate, does in fact, influence the final evaluation of his suitability. However, appearance and bearing were found to have no significant relationship to the more detailed assessments of "social interests", "motivation", "range of knowledge" and "personal characteristics". Comparisons of the times expended in the two types of interview showed face-to-face interviews to be substantially larger overall than those on the telephone. The interviewer talked relatively more, and the candidate relatively less in the face-to-face as compared with the telephone situation. The proportion of silent time was substantially the same for both types of interview. Implications for further research and application to interviewing practices are discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of D. LITT in Communication Science University of Zululand, South Africa, 2005. / In this dissertation I present the results of a literature survey on the reasons for demotivation among adolescents, and the role of communication in remotrvating demotivated adolescents, and a subsequent empirical survey of how adolescents feel about themselves and others of a group of grade 10 and 11 learners in the eThekwini region of the KwaZulu-Natal Province in South Africa. I report results on the respondents' self-conceptualisation, their family, how they feel about school, homework, school relationships, peer and finally regarding their health matters.

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