This exploratory piece of work aims to illustrate the potential of matching methods in vocational education and training (VET) research.
Do pre-apprenticeships help individuals to obtain an apprenticeship?
This report investigates the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) for its coverage of wellbeing questions. It is an area of considerable interest to policy-makers, and having a valid set of wellbeing questions in LSAY will enhance the capacity to investigate the links between wellbeing and other domains of interest for young people. The analysis finds three robust factors, which can be termed social wellbeing, material wellbeing and career. The three factors do not cover all the dimensions of wellbeing discussed in the literature, particularly the psychological aspects. Suggestions are made for enhancing the current list of wellbeing questions in LSAY.
The Student Outcomes Survey is an annual national survey of vocational education and training (VET) students. Since 1995, participants have been asked to rate their satisfaction with different aspects of their training, grouped under three main themes: teaching, assessment, and general skills and learning experiences. In this paper we review and compare three different methods of creating summary measures — Rasch analysis, weighted means and simple means — that encapsulate the three main themes of student satisfaction. We find that all three methods yield similar results and so recommend using the simple means method to create the summary measures.