Training for older worker Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Training for older worker - Essay Example Reed et. al. (2005) begin with explaining the importance of older workers which is expected to increase as time goes by and note that calling older workers slow or inflexible is a stereotype. However, older workers may face issues of self-efficacy and believe themselves to be unable to perform certain technology related tasks simple because they are old. Thus, their age related confidence levels may be more responsible for create barriers to their training rather than any direct impact which they age or their advanced years have on their performance. The researchers hypothesize that age is negatively related to computer skill acquisition and that age is negatively related to computer self-efficacy (CSE). The third hypothesis given by the researchers is that CSE will mediate the influence of age on the acquisition of computer skills. To test their hypotheses, the researchers used 109 volunteers from a Midwestern community. These subjects were predominantly female and the median age of the group was 51 years old. The subjects took a survey to report on their computer skills, their attitude towards technology and their ability to handle change. The self reported results were compared to their monitored and measured performance on completing a set of tasks with spreadsheet and word processing software. The results showed that CSE effectively mediate the relationship between age and both the objective and subjective measures of the acquisition of computer skills.