Seeking Your Thoughts on Crafting Effective Pre-Training Assessment Questions

Hi Friends,

I would like to get inputs from all of you regarding a pre-training assessment questionnaire. The questionnaire I am referring to is not a Training Needs Assessment questionnaire but a questionnaire administered to the participants before a training program commences. This can later be evaluated along with the final evaluation that we conduct at the end of a training program.

Thanks,
Chris

Yep, a survey questionnaire can be prepared before the training starts. However, it is only worthwhile if you are planning on conducting post-training feedback. This would help you perform gap analysis in terms of how the training improved the employees/clients.

There are two ways of doing this:

1) A generic questionnaire. I have attached the attachment.

2) A questionnaire related to the training program. This would include questions related to your training program, such as Oracle.

Try to have a scorecard for each of the questions so that at the end of the feedback session, you can determine how much improvement has been made.

Cheers,
Vinod Vijapur

You can conduct an Entry Behaviour Test (EBT) to gauge the knowledge level of trainees about the subjects that you are going to offer training in. It can consist of a 25 or 50-item question paper (objective-multiple choice). That will give you an insight into the standard of the student before training. Once the training is finished, you can conduct a final behaviour test or the final exam, which will tell you how much the trainee has been able to grasp from the training. A comparison of the EBT and FBT will tell you how effective the training has been for a particular trainee.

Pre-training questionnaire is prepared to assess the knowledge level of the trainees prior to training.

Veena,

I am sorry, I am still not clear on this. Why are you doing this? What will be the outcome? How will you nominate trainees? Why do you need to assess before commencing the program? What is the use of it? Please explain.

Regards, Jeyaseelan.A

Hello Chris,

What kind of pre-training questionnaire would be used basically depends upon the seriousness of the organization.

The pre-training questionnaire can also be used to clarify the expectations of the participants and from the participants. What I mean is that it can also be used as a tool for introducing the training program to them - why they are doing this program and how it is related to their KRAs. The questions can be focused on their competence levels in that skill and their expectations from the particular training program.

This basically helps the participants to prepare mentally for the training as well as the trainer, as he can customize the training program according to the expectations of the participants, focusing on the live applications of the learning in their workplaces.

The organizations/trainers can make the training more interesting and successful by solving the real problems faced by participants in the workplace related to their KRAs.

So, I think pre-training questionnaires are a must for a successful and learning-oriented training program, and that is what I practice in my consultancy.

Hanu

Hi all,

Perhaps a different angle, but I have used a pre-training questionnaire to determine the preferred learning styles of individuals to customize training content to individual styles. I do, however, agree with other posts on determining levels of knowledge, skills, and behavior pre and post-training.

What you include depends on the purpose or information you want/need to collect. The last question posed is most relevant.

R.JEV

Hi,

You can conduct a pre & post training test to gauge the increase in knowledge level of the participants.

Regards,
Arun

Thanks for the questionnaires. It is indeed appropriate, and individual trainers need to tweak the post-questionnaire filling up time depending on their end date of training, in my opinion.

However, thanks a lot,
Vinod Vijaypur
Kalpana