The Influence of Task Load and Automation Trust on Deception Detection

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects that user task load level has on the relationship between an individual's trust in and subsequent use of a system's automation. Military decision-makers trust and use information system automation to make many tactical judgments and decisions. In situations of information uncertainty (information warfare environments), decision-makers must remain aware of information reliability issues and temperate their use of system automation if necessary. An individual's task load may have an effect on his use of a system's automation in environments of information uncertainty.It was hypothesized that user task load will have a moderating effect on the positive relationship between system automation trust and use of system automation. Specifically, in situations of information uncertainty (low trust), high task load will have a negative effect on the relationship. To test this hypothesis, an experiment in a simulated command and control micro-world was conducted in which system automation trust and individual task load were manipulated. The findings from the experiment support the positive relationship between automation trust and automation use found in previous research and suggest that task load does have a negative effect on the positive relationship between automation trust and automation use. Experiment participant who incurred a higher task load exhibited an over-reliance on their automated information systems to assist them in their decision-making activities. Such an over-reliance can lead to vulnerabilities of deception and suggests the need for automated deception detection capabilities.     

Minimum and preferred entry qualifications and training provision for North Australian workers

This paper reports on the outcomes of a replication study of a survey of British employers that requested information on the qualifications sought when recruiting employees and on subsequent training and development. While the British survey was interested in the uptake and use of the British National Vocational Qualifications, the study reported in this article is primarily focused on the uptake and use of the Australian Qualifications Framework qualifications by North Australian employers. This study was prompted by the skills shortages and recruitment difficulties being experienced by organizations throughout rural and regional Australia. Previous studies have found that vocational qualifications were not valued by UK employers and few employers were encouraging employees to undertake vocational awards. If this is also the case in Australia, it may in part explain problems in recruiting skilled workers. This research clearly demonstrates that employees in regional and rural Australia are seeking to improve their knowledge and skills through vocational training and higher education qualifications. Also, employers are providing access to training and are supporting managerial and professional employees to gain higher educational qualifications. When recruiting all types of worker other than unskilled labourers, the majority of organizations prefer to recruit workers with qualifications. In rural and regional centres, however, a more pragmatic stance of recruiting unqualified employees in some areas is observed. Clearly, employers will attempt to minimize training costs by recruiting skilled employees, but in the end they will have to provide access to training and education to ensure that they have a skilled workforce that can deliver essential services and products.     

Urban Influence on Costs of Production in the Corn Belt

This article determines the relative technical efficiency of rural- and urban-influenced crop/livestock enterprises in the Corn Belt. Farmers in urban-influenced locations are less technically efficient than farmers in rural locations. During 1998–2000, stochastic production frontier procedures indicate that a 10% increase in urban influence leads to a close to 4% decrease in technical efficiency. The most successful urban-influenced farms have controlled costs as effectively as rural farms. They have tended to de-emphasize that nondairy livestock activities—particularly beef and hogs—do not rely extensively on off-farm income, and have relatively large, less residential/lifestyle operations compared to less successful urban-influenced farmers. However, our statistical analysis clearly bears out the refrain in popular literature that urban proximity raises the cost for, and decreases the viability of, traditional farms.     

On Measuring the Value of a Nonmarket Good Using Market Data

We use line integral theory to lay out in a more general theoretical framework the conditions under which it is possible to measure with market data the welfare effects of a change in a nonmarket good. We present in detail a numerical method of measuring the value of nonmarket goods using market data, under either weak neutrality or weak complementarity. Our numerical method is more flexible than the existing analytical method because it can be used with any well-behaved Marshallian demand function, and can be used even when the willig condition does not hold.     

International briefing 16: training and development in the Republic of Ireland

This paper explores the landscape of training and development in the Republic of Ireland, a country with an impressive economic record in recent years. Both the Irish economic context and business context are explored. The national system for training and development and the surrounding policy and strategy context are set down. Survey data are drawn upon to examine the nature of training and development at organizational level. Here influence on training and development, levels of expenditure, the number of days per employee category and the dominant methods employed training and development are all discussed. Finally the academic study of training and development in the Republic of Ireland is examined.     

Explaining Differences in Economic Performance Among Racial and Ethnic Groups in the USA

A bstract . By utilizing self-reported race and ancestry in the 1980 and 1990 USA censuses and the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique, the extent of wage discrimination experienced by women and by men is examined across 50 ethnic/racial groups. Systematic evidence of negative discrimination is revealed in both census years for Asian, Indian, black (African-American), Vietnamese, Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican , and Native American males. To assess the charge that the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition indicates cultural rather than discriminatory differentials, two additional data experiments are performed—one that controls for color and varies culture, and one that controls for culture and varies color. Race appears to matter.