Abstract The first clause of the first chapter in law of vocational training stipulates that the implementation of vocational training aims in particular to cultivate the manpower of country-building skills, to enhance job skill, and promote people¡¦s work. Hence, the goal of vocational training lies mainly in facilitating people¡¦s work. The problem of being unemployed results from the transition of the industrial structure and the job market; therefore, the short-term training of HVAChas been opened with a view to helping the jobless learn the skill for earning a living as soon as possible, and promoting more chances of work for the jobless return to the job market as early as possible. This study includes the applied area on the market of HVAC, the vocational training program of short-term training, the contents of training courses and skill tests. By means of the analysis of applied area on HVAC, the questionnaire of related staff, the results of interview and survey, it has confirmed that the theory of supply and demand of economics, and has also proved that the short-term training of HVAC for the jobless can meet the demands of job market HVAC. For the jobless who are able to learn the skill to work, the short-term vocational training of HVAC, increasing the chances of work, is really worth affirmation.

In this ubiquitous computing society, most students are required to be proficient in computer skills to compete in today’s global job market. These computer skills usually include skills in business productivity applications. Assessing those skills is normally accomplished by hands-on skills exams, which can become onerous and costly. This study explored whether a combination of a computer self-efficacy (CSE) survey, cognitive questions, and skill-based questions could indeed be a valid alternative to a hands-on skills exam. The findings of this study indicate some types of questions may be better predictors of performance on the hands-on skills exam, and some combinations of survey items and questions may be viable alternatives to hands-on skills exams. As a result of this research, schools and companies could adapt these indirect and direct assessments to their situation to perform their own study or assess the skills of their students/employees.

This thesis focuses on (1) the statistical methodologies for the estimation of spatial data with outliers and (2) classification accuracy of disease diagnosis. Chapter I, Robust Estimation for Spatial Markov Random Field Models: Markov Random Field (MRF) models are useful in analyzing spatial lattice data collected from semiconductor device fabrication and printed circuit board manufacturing processes or agricultural field trials. When outliers are present in the data, classical parameter estimation techniques (e.g., least squares) can be inefficient and potentially mislead the analyst. This chapter extends the MRF model to accommodate outliers and proposes robust parameter estimation methods such as the robust M- and RA-estimates. Asymptotic distributions of the estimates with differentiable and non-differentiable robustifying function are derived. Extensive simulation studies explore robustness properties of the proposed methods in situations with various amounts of outliers in different patterns. Also provided are studies of analysis of grid data with and without the edge information. Three data sets taken from the literature illustrate advantages of the methods. Chapter II, Extending the Skill Test for Disease Diagnosis: For diagnostic tests, we present an extension to the skill plot introduced by Mozer and Briggs (2003). The method is motivated by diagnostic measures for osteoporosis in a study. By restricting the area under the ROC curve (AUC) according to the skill statistic, we have an improved diagnostic test for practical applications by considering the misclassification costs. We also construct relationships, using the Koziol-Green model and mean-shift model, between the diseased group and the healthy group for improving the skill statistic. Asymptotic properties of the skill statistic are provided. Simulation studies compare the theoretical results and the estimates under various disease rates and misclassification costs. We apply the proposed method in classification of osteoporosis data.