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Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (1980)

Chapter: 4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service

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Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 45
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 46
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 47
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 48
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 49
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 50
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 51
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 52
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 53
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 54
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 55
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 56
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 57
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 58
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 59
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 60
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 61
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 62
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 63
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 64
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 65
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 66
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 67
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 68
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 69
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 70
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 71
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 72
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 73
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 74
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 75
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 76
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 77
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 78
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 79
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 80
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 81
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 82
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 83
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 84
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 85
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 86
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 87
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 88
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 89
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 90
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 91
Suggested Citation:"4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service." National Research Council. 1980. Work, Jobs, and Occupations: A Critical Review of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/92.
×
Page 92

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

4 Use of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles Outside the U.S. Employment Service In accordance with its charge, the committee undertook an assessment of the current and projected need for the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (and other program products) outside the U.S. Employment Service. As described in chapter 3, the DOT was originally designed for use as a job- matching tool for the U.S. Employment Service. Since 1939, when the first edition was published, the DOT has gained widespread acceptance and has been widely used by agencies and organizations outside the Employment Service. Since there has been no previous description of these users, one of the charges to the committee was to document the uses made of the DOT and assess the prevalence of these uses. We have approached this objective in several ways: (1) through a probability survey of persons who had recently purchased the DOT, (2) by interviews and site visits at organiza- tions and agencies identified as institutional users of products of the Division of Occupational Analysis (OA), these interviews being supple- mented by a survey of persons identified as users of the DOT at the state level, and (3) through inquiries of researchers who had used the DOT in their work or had evaluated the DOT itself, to develop an annotated bibliography of research uses of the DOT. Patricia A. Roos had primary responsibility for the preparation of this chapter. 45

46 COLLECTING DATA ON DOT USES DESCRIPTION OF THE UNIVERSE WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS Because the Dictionary of Occupational Titles is the most heavily used publication of the Division of Occupational Analysis, we concentrated our attention on the kinds and extent of use made of the DOT. The distribution and use of the career publications and other OA products are discussed at the end of the chapter. Figure 4-1 depicts the distribution of the fourth edition Dictionary of Occupational Titles since its publication in December 1977. These numbers were derived from consultation with the stab of the Government Printing Office, the Department of Labor, and the individual agencies to which the DOT was distributed. The federal agencies in the top half of Figure 4-1 are those that '`rode the requisition" for the DOT, that is, placed bulk orders supplementary to the basic requisition by the Department of Labor. In addition to these agencies other individuals, groups, and organizations ordered their copies directly from the Government Printing Office (GPO). Approximately 201,000 copies of the DOT have been printed for sale, and by September 30, 1979, 115,115 had been sold. A large portion of these were sold through bulk orders, either to GPO distribution centers or to college textbook centers. It is instructive to note that in the first 14-month period following the publication of the third edition DOT, 40,654 copies were sold; the comparable figure for the fourth edition was 100,198 copies. The total number of third edition copies sold from its 1965 publication date through the end of 1977 (when it went out of print) was 148,145. Clearly, interest in the information provided by the DOT has increased dramatically since publication of the third edition. SAMPLING DESIGN Given the complex distribution of the DOT, the development of an adequate sample of DOT users outside the Employment Service represented something of a challenge. Consideration of Figure 4-1 conveys the nature of the difficulty. First, many copies were purchased in bulk by federal agencies and distributed to relevant staff, and no record was kept as to who received copies. To tap this part of the universe of users, we conducted site visits with agency personnel to determine what sort of institutional use was being made of the DOT. Second, the GPO sold the DOT in two ways: directly to individual parties through single-order purchases and indirectly through bulk orders from GPO distribution centers and college textbook

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 47 distribution firms. For the direct sales to individuals a record was kept by GPO of the name and address of the purchasing party, the date of sale, and the number of copies sold. No such records were kept by the resale agencies (GPO distribution centers, which are effectively retail bookstores, and college textbook distribution firms). To tap this part of the DOT user population, we surveyed a probability sample of the single-order purchas- ers of the DOT; in addition, we solicited information from casual samples of two types of known DOT users: those identified by staff of the State Occupational Information Coordinating Committee and those identified by researchers who had published material using the DOT. In order to interpret responses from a probability sample of single-order purchasers of the DOT as being representative of the universe of DOT users outside federal agencies, it is necessary to make two assumptions: first, that purchasers of the DOT from resale agencies do not diner in the aggregate from those who purchased the DOT directly from the GPO; and second, that purchasers do not differ in the aggregate from nonpurchasers who use the DOT. The first assumption creates no difficulty; there is no reason to believe that the manner of purchase seriously affects the nature of use. The second assumption is somewhat more troubling. In many cases the purchasing party was an organization or division within an organization. In such a case many people may use a single copy of the DOT. As we note below, our sampling strategy was designed to elicit a response from the primary user of the DOT within an organization, but it was not tightly controlled and is hence subject to an unknown amount of error. Despite these problems we regard our coverage of various types of users of the DOT as fully adequate for our purpose, which was to ascertain the major uses made of the document. Probability Survey of DOT Purchasers To create a sampling frame for the survey of DOT purchasers, a list of names and addresses of persons who bought the DOT and other occupational analysis products still in print during the year period July 1977 through June 1978 was obtained from GPO. The earlier date was constrained by the lack of suitable records prior to July 1977, and the ending date of June 1978 was chosen so as to allow potential respondents a chance to become familiar with the item they purchased before being queried. With this sampling frame we were guaranteed both an address and an interest in occupational analysis products, as evidenced by the fact that the individual or organization had purchased an OA publication. Given the December 1977 publication date of the fourth edition DOT, the

48 o .o ~ · ~ O -~ Q _ o a, C a, -·\ 00 ~ Q.~ > or ~ ~ 0 a, C, O , _ _ . / ' a, ~n / ~ a, ° _ / Q ~ Cad ~5 Q ~ ~ / ~ ~ O- ~ O Z~ O / / ,° E ~ -~ ~ in, ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ \ ri ~ ~ [D ~ ~ ._ at, So 2 O ~ ~D W _ O) _O ~ - O o D ~ O O ,.0, A, E c ~ ~ _ tn 0 c,, ~- Q .0 ~,, ~ Q ~ ~ O ~ ~ ~ (o d. O ~ ~ = 0 LLI _ Q ~ o ~ lL

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 49 use of this sampling base indicates that we sampled from among those persons who purchased this edition during its first 6 months of availability. The potential respondent universe included 11,476 names. Names and addresses were selected from this list by random sampling with probability of selection proportionate to the number of copies purchased. A relatively small sample of purchasers (N = 472) was drawn on the grounds that a high return rate from a small sample would produce more accurate results than a low return rate from a large sample and that our resources were not sufficient to ensure a high return rate unless we started with a relatively small sample. Our strategy proved successful in that we ultimately achieved a 74 percent completion rate, which is very high for mail surveys. The selection procedure entailed sending one questionnaire (shown in Appendix A) to each name and address selected regardless of how many copies were purchased. The questionnaire was sent to the listed address with instructions in the cover letter to forward the questionnaire to an appropriate individual, i.e., an actual user of the DOT. This instruction was necessary because the name of the purchaser provided on the GPO list was not necessarily the person for whom the publication was ordered; we had no control over which individual actually received the questionnaire. Interviews, Case Studies, and a Survey of Institutional Users Because the GPO list was limited to single-order purchasers, we supple- mented the survey results by eliciting information from large institutional users of the DOT outside the Employment Service. This task was approached in two ways. First, the stab conducted interviews at organizations that are large users of OA products (mainly federal agencies in the Washington, D.C., area). In addition, detailed case studies of DOT use were conducted at the federal agencies that ordered large numbers of copies of the fourth edition DOT (see Figure 4-1~: the Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training of the Employment and Training Adminis- tration, the Bureau of Disability Insurance of the Social Security Administration, and the Veterans Administration. (The Department of Navy never distributed its copies, so no case study was conducted there.) Interviews were generally conducted with the director and other members of the professional staff of the division in which DOT use was most prevalent (see Appendix B for detailed reports). Second, a copy of the purchaser questionnaire was sent to a list of 338 names generated by contacting the various state offices of the State Occupational Information Coordinating Committee (so~cc). The sonic names were solicited to enlarge the number of responses from persons within various state organizations with particular knowledge of or interest in the use of the

so WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS DOT in their state or whose work might be seriously affected if the DOT were to be discontinued. Whereas the GPO sample was a probability sample of purchasers, the sock list had the very different purpose of getting the questionnaire to institutional users who might not be well represented on the purchaser list. Survey of Researchers A final group of users of the DOT outside the Employment Service is academic and other researchers. In order to identify this population a query was sent to a group of researchers who had used the DOT in their published or unpublished work as well as to those researchers who have discussed or criticized the DOT; the target population was identified informally on the basis of staff and committee knowledge. In addition, the staff contacted purchasers of the DOT who appeared on the GPO list with the title Dr. or Professor or who were located in a college or university academic department. A letter to researchers requested reprints or citations of published and unpublished work in which the DOT was used as a research tool. This material was used in the compilation of an annotated bibliography of research uses of the DOT (see Appendix C). TIMETABLE OF SURVEY PROCEDURES Preliminary versions of the questionnaire were reviewed by members of the committee and by members of the Department of Labor Technical Steering Committee (representatives from the departments of Labor, Commerce, and Health, Education, and Welfare). The questionnaire was revised, both in the wording and sequencing of questions, and a pretest version was sent to 50 randomly drawn names from the GPO mailing list on December 11, 1978. On January 5, 1979, a follow-up questionnaire was sent to those of the original 50 names who had not responded to the · . . previous inquiry. On January 9, 1979, a revised version of the questionnaire and a supporting statement were sent to the Department of Labor (DOL) SO that DOL staff could initiate clearance procedures with the Office of Manage- ment and Budget (OMB). Clearance was granted from DOE on February 13 and from OMB on March 21. On the basis of the pretest results, minor revisions were made, and the final printed version of the questionnaire was sent to the sample of DOT purchasers and the sock group on April 13, 1979. Mail follow-ups to those who had not responded were sent out on May 8 and June 5. A final telephone follow-up of the DOT purchaser sample was conducted during the week of July 1~20; those respondents

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 51 agreeing to fill out the questionnaire were sent another copy. As of August 15, 1979, 632 questionnaires had been returned, representing a 74-percent response rate for the DOT purchasers and an 84-percent response rate for the sock group.) INSTITUTIONAL USES OF THE DOT: A SAMPLE OF PURCHASERS The purchaser survey was designed to answer four basic questions: (1) who uses the DOT and for what reasons, (2) what is the nature and frequency of DOT use, (3) how essential is its use, and (4) how adequate is it for the purposes for which it is used? This section provides the results of the survey of those DOT purchasers who reported that they had ever used the DOT (90 percent of all the responding DOT purchasers).2 Appendix A presents the response frequencies for each item in the questionnaire. A wide variety of organizations find the DOT helpful in their work. Tables 4-1 and 4-2 provide information on the type of employer for which the DOT purchasers work and the type of work they do. Among the most frequent types of employers are educational institutions (42 percent), government agencies (20 percent), private for-profit companies (13 percent), libraries (13 percent), and nonprofit organizations (10 percent). Purchasers did a variety of types of work, the most prevalent being career and vocational counseling (30 percent), library reference (18 percent), management (15 percent), and employment placement (8 percent). Table 4-3 provides an overall view of the type of work done by purchasers in various kinds of organizations. Users in educational institutions are employed primarily in career and vocational counseling and guidance. In the educational institutions surveyed, 57 percent of the DOT users do this type of work. Another 13 percent are engaged in Twenty-six percent of the DOT purchaser sample did not respond. A few of these nonresponses were due to the respondent's being too busy to fill out the questionnaire. A few other respondents reported that they did not use the DOT and thus could not respond to the survey. However, the vast majority (96 percent) of nonrespondents never responded to any of the three mailings and could not be contacted by phone. It is reasonable therefore to infer that many of these questionnaires never reached their target owing, no doubt, in large part to the lack of specificity in the GPO list of purchasers, which often did not list an individual's name. This problem was particularly difficult given the number of large institutional purchasers of the DOT included in the sample. 2Because of the lack of specificity of the sampling frame (the GPO list of names and addresses), a question was included on the survey to identify Employment Service employees. Since the primary interest in this section is in exploring DOT use by agencies or organizations other than the Employment Service, the eight respondents who reported that they worked for their state Employment Service were excluded from the analysis. See chapter 3 for details on Employment Service use of the DOT.

52 WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS TABLE 4-! Distribution of DOT Purchasers, by Type of Employer (N = 309) Type of Employer Percentage Library Educational institution Government Private for-profit business Nonprofit business Other types of employers TOTAL 101 13 42 20 14 10 2 vocational education. The DOT users in government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, on the other hand, are engaged in a variety of different kinds of work, primarily rehabilitation counseling (mostly at the state level), employment placement and career counseling (mostly federal), and the projection of labor force trends (mostly county/local government). In contrast, users in private industry are employed quite differently: two thirds are in administration, including personnel or general management and compensation administration. The occupational identifications of DOT users are reflected in the professional associations to which the respon TABLE 4-2 Distribution of DOT Purchasers, by Type of Work (N = 307) a Type of Work Percentage Career or vocational counseling Rehabilitation counseling Vocational education Employment placement Management/compensation Projections/occupational information dissemination Librarianship Teaching/research Other work TOTAL 30 7 7 8 15 7 18 101 a Total N of 309, with two no answers.

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 53 dents belong; the most frequently mentioned associations include the American Personnel and Guidance Association, the American Vocational Association, the National Rehabilitation Association, and National Education Association. HOW THE DOT IS USED Given the nature of the sample (purchasers of the fourth edition DOT), it is not surprising that 88 percent of the respondents report that they have used the fourth edition. The bulk of respondents report that they make more frequent use of the fourth edition than of earlier editions. Of the fourth edition purchasers, 43 percent note that they use the fourth edition regularly, while another 45 percent report occasional use in the past year. At the time of the survey, some organizations were still making use of the first two volumes of the third edition: more than 46 percent of the sample report that they had used either the first or second volume of the third edition DOT in the past year (third edition Volumes 1 and 2 include the definitions of titles, the occupational classification, industry index, and the worker trait information). For those respondents dependent on worker trait information, a supplement of the third edition DOT (U.S. Department of Labor, 1966) is the only available source, since at the time of the survey the fourth edition worker trait data had not yet been published. Table 4-4 presents a description of the use of the component parts of the DOT by purchasers engaged in various types of work. The DOT job titles and definitions are by far the most heavily used parts of the DOT: 95 percent of those responding report that they use the dictionary function of the DOT. Moreover, use of the job titles and definitions is heavy regardless of the type of work performed. Another frequently utilized part of the DOT is the classification scheme itself. Three fifths of the respondents indicate that they use the DOT classification and codes for administrative and statistical reporting reasons. The only groups not reporting heavy use of the DOT codes and classification are librarians and those engaged in management or compensation administration. The worker function data (the complexity of the relationship of the occupation to data, people, and things) or their rearrangement into the worker trait groups is used by an identifiable minority of the respondents. Not surprisingly, the types of work for which these parts of the DOT are most useful are those concerned with the transferability of skills, that is, in matching an individual to employment on the basis of his or her previous jobs and/or assessed skill level. Counselors (especially those in rehabilitative counseling) and educators (in the career counseling field) are among those most likely to employ the worker function scales. The industry designation and the

54 o :^ o 3 Cal o U. o ._ Ct. an Cat U. a, U' Cat C~ o o ._ . - U. C~ a, P" 1 ~ o m ~ :^ o o a~ a, ~0 a~ O a, 0 ~ ~ U) . t o o ~ Z ~ m a> - ° - 0 ~ ~ a: - ;> o C) o o ._ ._ .- _ LU _ D ._ 3o o oo ~ ~ C~ ~ oo _ o o o _ r~ o oo ~ ~ o o ~ oo o o o ~ ~ _ _ _ ~Ch, - - ~ - o ~ c~ o o ~o o ~ ~ ~- ~ ~ - ~ ~o ~ 0 ~ ~ ~ oo 0 0 ~ 0 ~ ~ 0g - i ~--~ - - ~ ~ ~ oo ~ ~ ~ o ~ o oo - - - - , ~ - - - o o o o o o o o o o o o oo ~ oo ~ -- - - a, u' c C 2 8 a O c, ~ ~ E 8 o 2 a E e 2 ~ 8 E . .° O ~: o ._ C~ ~ a~ C ° C ~ ° ~ ~ a~ ~ ~ .= S ~ 04 ~ S 0 .~.= ~ 3 ~ i ~ O O ~ U, 3 Ct ~o o3 _ ~s 3 o o - C. o

55 to o D o is, V os Am at 3 O o of a) a) _ if ~ ~ o ~ ," s o 3 s C ~ ._ _ TIC ~ a: ·c ~ ._ D u, Hi ~ ~ 8 ~ ~ - o C . 4,) C C 1_ - 8 C C ~ ~ C C o o · ~ o lo > ~ To . · .C _ _ ~ ~ C A._ 3 o: ~ C 7 ° o ~ C ~ o ~ ~ o ~ _ o ~oo ~ _4 ~ _ ~_ O ~d. ~- - o ~ ~o o ~oo ~Ur) ~ - ~- ~ ~- ~ - o - o o ~oo o ~0 0 ~o ~0 0 o ~ ~ o -~ - - oo ~ er o ~ ~ o ~ ~- ~ - - ~ ~- ~ O ~ ~ ~ ~ r~ t~ ~ ~ ~ u~ ~ E 2, E ~ ~ 2 ~ ~ y ~ 2 ~ ~U ~,oo _% :: : ~ C~ E ~ ° E < ' 3 U' 3 U, o o 3 - ~_ . _ o o - o

56 a' ._ o o g ._ V) an Cal ._ so x as o o Cal Cal C) ~ o to ~ ~ o Cal ~ - =4 _ to Cal .m o . _ - Cal . _ o - a' x Lo o ~d _ ~ ~ o ~3 _ so o ~ ~ .U) Cal o . _ o A o 3 o a' :^ cry cr o o ~ ~ho ~ ~ ~ lo ~ ~ ~v) ~ ~ Cal rip c~ ~ oo oo _ ~ r~ ~C~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~C~ ~ ~ ~V) oo oo ~ ~ ~_ ~ o ~ r~ . ° Ct oe ~ ~L~ C oD . O , C 3 ~: ~ ¢d cd O ~ ~ S:: o 0 a°: ~ E ~c O ._ ~ ~ ~C~ ·- (L) °- s ~ E ~ ° ~ s ~ s o ;> ~ ~ ~ ~ O ~ ao 3 V, ~o o - - · - 3 cr o r~ o - ct - o ~3

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 57 worker trait data (GED; SVP; interests, aptitudes, and temperaments; environmental and physical working conditions) are used by approximate- ly one third of the respondents. As is true for the worker function scales, the worker trait data for specific occupations are heavily used by those assessing the transferability of skills. Perhaps the clearest example of this type of use is in the rehabilitation counseling field; counselors employ the entire range of worker trait information to guide their disabled clients in choosing appropriate alternative employment given their education, skill level, past employment, and disabilities. (For additional details on this type of DOT use, refer to Appendix B for reports from site visits to the Bureau of Disability Insurance and the Veterans Administration.) HOW ESSENTIAL IS THE DOT? From the information conveyed in Table 4-4 it is clear that those who purchased the fourth edition DOT do in fact use the various parts of the DOT in their work. Although certain parts are used more than others (e.g., job titles, job defintions, and the DOT codes), there is an identifiable subset of persons and organizations using every major part of the DOT. An important question is whether this information could be derived from alternative sources or whether the DOT iS a unique source of occupational information, the lack of which would seriously hamper the ability of users to do their jobs. Table 4-5 provides at least a partial answer to this question. The respondents were asked to estimate the extent to which their work would be disrupted if the Dictionary of Occupational Titles were to be discontin- ued. A total of 88 percent of the respondents report that discontinuing the DOT would have an effect on their normal work operations; 36 percent report that the inconvenience they would experience would be major or that discontinuance would seriously disrupt their work. The extent to which discontinuance of the DOT would affect operations varies somewhat by type of work. Well over three quarters of the respondents in all but one of the work categories indicate that losing the DOT would have at least some effect on their work. Some groups, however, indicate that they would experience greater inconvenience than others. More than half the respondents in four categories view the continuance of the DOT as essential to their ongoing operations (i.e., report that loss of the DOT would cause them major inconvenience or seriously disrupt their work): those em- ployed in rehabilitation counseling, vocational education, labor force projections and occupational information dissemination, and teaching and research (educators in the counseling field). When asked whether substitute sources exist to which they could turn for the information they

58 WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS currently derive from the DOT, only about one fifth of the respondents in each of these four groups answered in the affirmative. Managers (personnel and general) and compensation administrators are least likely to report that the DOT iS essential to their work. However, only 26 percent of these respondents knew of any alternative sources of occupational information they could use to provide the information they currently derive from the DOT. Career or vocational counselors and librarians are also less likely than respondents in other work categories to report that the DOT is essential to their work. However, respondents engaged in these types of work are somewhat more likely to know of other sources of occupational information; 58 percent of the counselors evidently feel that the DOT is only one of a variety of occupational sources they could use in their work. To determine what kinds of occupational information other than that provided in the DOT are used, respondents were asked whether and how frequently they had used various occupational information publications in the past year. Table 4-6 presents the results of this question cross-classified by type of work. A majority of the respondents indicate that they make use of the wage surveys published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BES) and of the Department of Labor's Occupational Outlook Handbook: 57 and 80 percent, respectively, report that they made use of these two publications within the past year. With two exceptions, more than three quarters of the respondents in each category report that they used the Occupational Outlook Handbook in their work in the past year. Only in management and compensation administration are respondents less likely to indicate that they use the Occupational Outlook Handbook; however, these respondents are more likely than others to indicate use of the BES wage surveys. The average respondent makes comparatively little use of other occupational publications. However, respondents in different job catego- ries find the occupational publications differentially useful. Career or vocational counselors, for example, are more likely than other respondents to indicate that they use other occupational publications. They are, in fact, significant users of commercially produced occupational material (Holland - classification publications such as Professional Manual for the Self- Directed Search (Holland, 1973b); The Guidance Information System: GIS Guide (Time Share Corporation, 1976~; occupational and career explora- tion kits (Science Research Associates, 1979~; Chronicle Occupational Library (Chronicle Guidance Publications, no date); and Worker Trait Group Guide (Appalachian Educational Laboratory, 1978~. These com- mercially published career aids are often heavily based on the DOT, repackaged so as to be more readily available to and usable by the

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 59 counseling client population. Other groups making significant use of these publications include rehabilitation counselors and educators (in the career counseling field). Finally, significant proportions of librarians and others involved in the dissemination of occupational information also note the importance of publications of the Census Bureau in their work. ADEQUACY OF THE DOT From the previous sections it is clear that many agencies and organizations outside the Employment Service use the DOT for a variety of different purposes, that identifiable groups use every major part of the DOT, and that most of those who purchased the DOT would experience inconve- nience, often major inconvenience, if it were to be discontinued. This section explores the perceived adequacy of the DOT from the point of view of the external users surveyed. In addition, respondents' suggestions as to how the DOT should be improved are presented. Table 4-7 provides a compilation of respondents' perceptions regarding the adequacy of the DOT. Respondents were asked to consider how adequate the DOT is, given the main purpose for which they use it. Nearly two thirds of the respondents report that the DOT was very adequate. Only respondents working in management and compensation administration are less enthusiastic about the adequacy of the DOT: approximately equal proportions of these respondents rated the DOT as very adequate and somewhat adequate. Only a very few respondents in each category rated the DOT as inadequate for their purposes. The perceived adequacy of the DOT was also tabulated separately for users of each component of the DOT. Without exception, at least 60 percent of the users of each part view the DOT as very adequate. This enthusiastic response, of course, refers only to the perceptions of respondents and not to any technical assessment of the DOT product (see chapter 7 for a discussion of the technical adequacy of the DOT). Although viewing the DOT as generally adequate for the purposes for which they use it, respondents do provide suggestions as to how it might be improved. Table 4-8 presents these suggestions. Responding to a prepared list of improvements derived from the pretest, the majority (54 percent) of respondents indicated that career ladders should be incorporat- ed into the DOT. In referring specifically to the fourth edition DOT a substantial proportion of respondents, although not a majority, indicated that they would prefer a hard cover (like that of the third edition). In addition, most types of users strongly support inclusion of the worker trait

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62 WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS TABLE 4-7 Percentage Distribution of Judgments of Adequacy of the DOT for Main Purpose Adequacy of DOT for Main Purpose Very Somewhat Inade Type of Work Adequate Adequate quate Total N Career or vocational counseling Rehabilitation counseling Vocational education Employment placement Management/ compensation 52 43 4 Projections/occupational information 62 68 82 74 34 32 18 0 26 0 99 0 100 100 00 99 (87) (22) (22) (23) (46) dissemination 68 32 0 100 (19) Librarianship 66 32 2 100 (50) Teaching/research 60 33 7 100 (15) Other work 39 54 8 101 (13) TOTAL a 63 34 3 100 (297) a Total N of 309, with 12 no answers. information, which at the time of the survey was not yet available in the fourth edition. Few respondents see a need for the incorporation of the Standard Occupational Classification (sac) codes into the DOT: in only one work category (teaching/research) does the proportion of respondents desiring soc inclusion exceed one fifth. (Of course, since the soc was first published in 1977, there has not yet been much chance for potential users to become acquainted with it.) Finally, in two open-ended questions included on the survey, respon- dents were asked (1) whether there were any occupations not currently included in the DOT that should be and (2) for any additional suggestions for improvements. Suggestions of new occupations to be included ranged from the specific (e.g., word processor operator, solar energy technician, bilingual secretary) to the more general (e.g., newly emerging occupations, paramedical occupations, military jobs, executive titles, energy occupa- tions). Other suggestions for improvements included incorporation of the Office of Education codes, a better indexing system, and easier readability.

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service GOVERNMENT USES OF THE DOT 63 As we have noted, some important users of the DOT cannot be readily identified through any systematic sampling strategy. Because the sampling frame for the probability survey was limited to retail purchasers (the GPO single-order list), users who purchased large quantities of the DOT by riding the Employment Service requisition are not represented. To cover these users as well as other major institutional users, committee staff conducted a series of interviews at various federal agencies. In addition, a copy of the DOT questionnaire was sent to state-level users of OA materials. This section presents the interview and survey results identifying the nature and extent of use of the DOT in these agencies. INTERVIEW RESULTS A number of government agencies make wide-ranging use of the DOT and other materials produced by the Division of Occupational Analysis. Four major uses were identified: (1) employment training (e.g., the Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training), (2) disability determination (e.g., the Bureau of Disability Insurance of the Social Security Administration), (3) rehabilitation and employment counseling (e.g., the Veterans Administra- tion), and (4) program planning, counseling, and curriculum development. Each of these major uses is described in turn. Following this presentation the use of the DOT by occasional users, such as the Department of Defense and the Office of Personnel Management (formerly the Civil Service Commission), is discussed. EMPLOYMENT TRAINING AND PRODUCTION OF OCCUPATIONAL INFORMATION Within the area of employment training, major users of the DOT and other materials produced by the Division of Occupational Analysis are of two types: those concerned with the management and coordination of training programs and those concerned with producing labor market information related to planning and managing training efforts. Most, if not all, of the federally funded employment training programs fall under the purview of the Department of Labor and make use of DOT occupational titles and codes at least for record-keeping and statistical reporting (e.g., for recording information on clients, training opportunities, and job place- ments). For example, occupational records maintained by the 60 Job Corps centers across the country routinely include DOT titles and codes. While there is no national requirement that the prime sponsors of the

64 o o ~_ a~ o _4 ._ ._ s~ ._ cn a C~ a) cq C~ C~ s~ o C~ C) s~ oo 3 o C) u' o _ ~ ;^ <: i~ 0 ~ o o ~ oo ,c C ~ c C~ C~ V) oo ~_ ~oo V ~o ~ ~v ~c ~r ~O , 00 ~oo r~ _. r ~r ~O ~ ,^ ,^ ~oo ~_ ~ ._ ~r ~C ~r ~_ D C ~C ~~) ~- ~ :~5 Ct C . 0 C o , 0 Ct ,~, ._ _ C ,= _ {~3 ·_ ~ G E E a, 3 o~ ~ ~0 V] ~ O _ ~ C - O C . _ E ~ C 04 ~ a=: o c ~ _ E c ;^ ~ o E E ~ ~ C C o o _ _ Ct ca ~ ~ ' o ~ . ~ . _ ._ ~ Ct C C ~ - =: o c ~ ~ . - c ~ ~ i: c E o E - OQ 3 V, - I ~O ~O ~O ~ } ~_ - ) - t- <) ~1- _ ~- ~_ - 0 00 0 00 c ~C - l ~C-l _` 00 ~- ~=N ~t _ O ~O r ~C ~V) ~r ~O ~ _` ~00 C~ V ~_ r ~_ ~ r ~V) ~_ 00 _ c: ~ ~ ~a O ' `_ ~ u E ,, ~ C ,°~-~ ~ ~ cn o a) Q' 3 oD v~ o C: o - o ._ ~ =: ~ , . ._ 3 3 m 0 ~ ~ ~_ oo o ~: ._ ~ ~ _

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 65 decentralized Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) program use the DOT coding structure for their reporting, many apparently do assign DOT codes to both participants and job openings. In addition to using DOT titles and codes for record-keeping purposes, trainers rely on the DOT and other occupational analysis products as basic sources of occupational information both in planning actual training programs and in counseling clients about occupational opportunities. For example, the Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training (BAT) purchased 1,000 copies of the fourth edition DOT to distribute to its regional, state, and local offices. Because of the Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training's heavy use of the DOT, an in-depth analysis was conducted by committee staff (see Appendix B for a detailed synopsis of the BAT'S use of the DOT). The Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training is in the business of reviewing and registering apprenticeship programs for skilled trade occupations. Its dependence on the DOT can be documented by the fact that no apprenticeship program can be registered for an occupation that has no existing DOT code. The use of the DOT in this context is in assessing whether a proposed apprenticeship program meets the standards of "apprenticeability" set by BAT, that is, whether the program ensures that apprentices receive at least 2,000 hours of on-thejob training. Currently, BAT personnel are considering liberalizing their requirements by supplementing their use of svP with other measures for assessing the apprenticeability of occupations. One of the methods being considered is using the sum of the worker function scales (the fourth, fifth, and sixth digits of the DOT code); another is employing the math, reasoning, and language subcomponents of the general education development (GED) scale. The BAT representatives consider these measures appropriate because of their strong positive correlation with svP. There are reports that operators of other federally funded training programs (e.g., CETA and the Work Incentive Program) have used the DOT materials in a similar way. Apparently, the DOT worker function (DATA, PEOPLE, and THINGS) scores were summed to create a synthetic indicator of training times that was then used to determine permissible levels of government expenditures for many, if not most, contracts from the Employment and Training Administration for on-thejob training. It was assumed that occupations with a higher skill-complexity code sum, and therefore a lower level of skill, necessitated less training time than those with a lower sum. One result of this practice was to exclude some occupations from federally funded training programs on the ground that they were not complex enough to require formal training. Use of the worker function scales in this manner violates the original intent of these scales. Accordingly, representatives from the Division of

66 WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS Occupational Analysis have suggested that the worker function scales not be employed in this manner. Managers of training programs are instead encouraged to rely on the svP and GED estimates in detennining training time requirements, as provided in a supplement to the third edition (a fourth edition supplement is currently being prepared). An interim publication produced by the Division of Occupational Analysis for the Help Through Industry Retraining and Employment (HIRE) progam and used by BAT provides fourth edition svP codes for each nine-digit DOT code. The proliferation of federally funded employment training programs has resulted in a growing demand for labor market information of all types. The DOT iS widely relied on by producers of labor market information as the source of the most basic occupational information. In partial response to the growing demand for information on occupations, efforts were undertaken to improve and expand sources of information available to those involved in career exploration, including actual job seekers. One such program, the Department of Labor's Career Information Systems (cats) program, funded eight states to develop and extend computer-based systems for providing occupational information to persons in the process of career exploration and decision making, especially students and out-of- school youths. All cars systems use DOT titles and codes. In addition, the DOT is a major source of occupational information for the cars; many cats occupational descriptions closely resemble DOT definitions. Finally, a major objective of the cars is to provide structured access to occupational information in order to assist individuals in matching personal characteris- tics with occupational characteristics. The cars information on occupational characteristics is based heavily on the worker trait and worker function information contained in the third edition DOT. Planners and managers of employment training programs are also heavy consumers of occupational information. Within the Employment and Training Administration (ETA), the Division of Labor Market Information (LMI) coordinates and conducts program development for labor market research and analysis units in all 50 states. These units were not set up to generate raw data; rather, they focus on the analysis of labor market information largely generated by ETA programs, including the Employ- ment Service. The localized labor market information they produce is used widely by CETA prime sponsors, school vocational education planners, and others involved at the state level with employment training and vocational preparation. The DOT is used by those involved in the EMI program primarily as a source of occupational descriptions. Chief among the labor market information producers is the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BES). A number of BES endeavors make direct, frequent

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 67 use of the DOT and other information generated by the Division of Occupational Analysis. A major BES enterprise that relies on the DOT iS the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) program. The OES iS a federal/state cooperative program conducted for ETA'S Division of Labor Market Information by BES. It has recently been re-funded to provide national estimates, the first since 1971. The OES program is designed to produce state and area data on current and projected occupational employment for use in planning education and training activities. Data on wage and salary employment by occupation are collected in periodic mail surveys of a sample of nonfarm establishments, conducted by state employment security agencies. Approximately 2,000 occupations are selected, either because they are highly skilled occupations or because they are ones in which large numbers of people are employed. The questionnaire is heavily based on the DOT; employers are asked about employment by DOT occupational title (or composites of DOT occupations) and by definitions that are largely abbreviated DOT occupational descriptions. When the decision was originally made concerning occupations to be included in the survey, a determination of the skill level of various occupations was made on the basis of svP and GED estimates from the third edition DOT. The first national report since 1971, on manufacturing establishments, is due to be published in 1980. One third of the economy will be surveyed each year: manufacturing in the first year and nonmanufacturing in the following 2 years. Occupational Employment Statistics personnel estimate that 250,000 establishments are surveyed in each round and that, in the 3-year period, 60 percent of the employees in the country will be covered. In addition to the DOT the Occupational Outlook Handbook, which is published every 2 years by the BES, iS a basic source of occupational information used in the employment training counseling process. The Occupational Outlook Handbook is related to the DOT in several ways: in addition to using DOT codes, its occupational descriptions borrow heavily from DOT definitions. Serious consideration is apparently being given to tying the Handbook more closely to the worker trait information contained in the DOT because of an increasing tendency within the counseling profession to make matches on this basis. Other BES studies are also intended to expand the base of occupational information used in employment training. The ES-203 program was begun to study the characteristics of the insured unemployed. In states that require individuals who make claims for unemployment insurance to register with the Employment Service, claimants' previous occupations are assigned DOT codes by ES workers. Under the ES-203 program a sample of those claiming unemployment insurance is selected for which Employment

68 WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS Service workers record limited data on selected demographic characteris- tics (e.g., age, sex, race, occupation, and industry of last job). Apparently, however, little analytical use has been made of these data. Interestingly, the BES Area Wage Survey Program makes only minimal use of the DOT except as a general reference. The program, which conducts occupational wage surveys, prefers to develop its own occupational classification structures and data, which are considered relevant for analyzing differences in wages but not necessarily for other purposes. These occupational structures are apparently not standardized but are developed for particular studies on the basis of information gathered from both industry and labor. From time to time, special purpose BES studies make use of information from the Division of Occupational Analysis program. Several years ago, for example, at the request of the BES Office of Occupational Safety and Health Statistics, the occupational analysis program staff identified more than 5,000 occupations meeting BES'S criteria of hazard. Interestingly, the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) apparently makes little or no use of the DOT. In analyzing illnesses and injuries by occupation for the purpose of standardizing workers' compensation practices, for example, OSHA indicated that it relied on census-derived occupational information. DISABILITY DETERMINATION A second major use of the DOT iS the determination of disability and eligibility for disability benefits. Disability determinations are made for a variety of reasons having to do with an individual's employability. They may concern an individual's entitlement to compensation, or they may assist in identifying suitable alternative employment for a disabled individual. In order to document the use made of the DOT in this context, committee staff visited the Bureau of Disability Insurance of the Social Security Administration (for a detailed report see Appendix B). The office within the Bureau of Disability Insurance (BDI) that ordered 2,240 copies of the DOT iS the Medical and Vocational Methods Branch, which is concerned with the formulation and dissemination of policy concerning the medical definition of disability. The determination of disability, and hence the eligibility for benefits under Title II of the Social Security Act, depends on establishing that disabilities are debilitating, in the sense that they keep one from being employed in the same or "similar" work as one has performed in the past. The Social Security Act's definition of disability mandates that a person's ability to perform alternative work, his or her "residual functional capacity," be evaluated before disability

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Senice 69 benefits can be awarded. The DOT is an important source document used in this evaluation, as is a supplement to the third edition DOT entitled Selected Characteristics of Occupations (Physical Demands, Working Conditions, Training Times}.3 These materials are used primarily in making an assessment of the kinds of employment the claimant can perform, given the disability incurred and his or her past employment. The underlying principle employed in the evaluation process is that if the disability is not incapacitating-because the physical, mental, and skill levels of the disabled individual are sufficient to meet the physical, mental, and skill demands of his or her previous employment-disability benefits are not allowed. If the individual cannot perform his or her past occupation, a determination is made as to whether there exist other jobs in the national economy that the disabled person could perform (i.e., work similar to previous employment but perhaps requiring a lesser amount of exertion). This determination of the transferability of skills between past and potential employment is made by referring to the information on worker trait groups, industry designation, physical demands, working conditions, and the GED and svP training time specifications, all of which are employed to develop a vocational profile of the claimant. The worker function (DATA, PEOPLE, and THINGS) scales as well as the GED and svP codes are used as rough measures of the skill level of an occupation. According to BD! practice, in order for an occupation to be recommended as alternative employment to a disabled client, it must not have a skill level higher than the client's previous occupation. A second set of characteris- tics taken into account in recommending alternative employment includes the physical demands and working conditions of the job. These character- istics of recommended jobs can be compared with the job profiles developed for the claimant's previous occupation in order to find matches at lower levels of exertion that the individual might be able to perform given his or her disabilities. An increasing number of BD] disability decisions are being appealed to the Bureau of Hearings and Appeals of the Social Security Administration. The courts have insisted that the bureau document the transferability of skills between past and alternative recommended occupations for disabled clients, and Bureau of Hearings and Appeals personnel have long relied on the DOT for this purpose. The bureau currently has nearly 1,000 vocational experts on contract who testify in roughly 10,000 disability cases per month nationwide. Their testimony has been based almost exclusively on Volumes 1 and 2 of the third edition DOT as well as the third edition supplement. 3The fourth edition supplement is scheduled for publication in 1980.

70 REHABILITATION AND EMPLOYMENT COUNSELING WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS A third major use of the DOT iS the counseling and rehabilitating of disabled workers. The Veterans Administration (VA), a large-scale user of this type, purchased 520 copies of the fourth edition for distribution to its 58 regional offices. To assess use of the DOT by counselors and rehabilitation specialists, committee staff visited the Washington, D.C., regional office of the Counseling and Rehabilitation Section of the Division of Education and Rehabilitation Service (see Appendix B for a detailed report). The VA iS responsible for implementing Title 38 of the U.S. Code-veterans' benefits. The counseling and rehabilitation staff has two major responsibilities: (1) overseeing awards of educational benefits to veterans (and war orphans or dependents of permanently disabled veterans) and (2) providing rehabilitative counseling and vocational training and making recommendations for payment of benefits to service- disabled veterans. Disabled veterans must undergo counseling if they wish to take advantage of veterans' assistance benefits under Title 38; veterans who are not disabled are not required to undergo counseling but may choose to do so. Eligibility for vocational rehabilitation is based on determination by a counselor of what additional training the veteran needs in light of functional limitations resulting from service-related disabilities. That determination is made on the basis of a review of the veteran's educational background and disability. In the process of identifying suitable work for which the veteran might be trained, a range of occupational materials, including the DOT, is used. In the VA counseling process the DOT descriptions and worker trait groups are relied on as sources of information on relationships among occupations and the transferability of skills. In addition to using the DOT code to identify occupational objectives, counselors also use the DOT for occupational exploration. The use of the DOT in this context is to define the tasks entailed in each occupation or job so that a client can determine which jobs are well suited to his or her constellation of skills, abilities, and interests. In identifying appropriate alternative employment for service- disabled veterans, counselors employ the physical and environmental attributes of occupations provided as part of the worker trait information in the third edition DOT. These attributes are used as a validation mechanism to ascertain whether a client will be able to perform a particular occupation, given service-related disabilities. In addition to using the DOT and other products of the occupational analysis program in counseling and in occupational exploration with

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 71 disabled veterans, the VA uses the DOT for statistical reporting. Informa- tion on veterans' employment objectives is recorded in terms of DOT titles and six-digit codes (the VA plans to switch to nine-digit codes shortly). State vocational rehabilitation (VR) programs use the DOT and other sources of occupational information in much the same way as does the Veterans Administration rehabilitation program. Determinations of eligi- bility for vocational rehabilitation are based on two findings: that individuals have mental or physical disabilities that are substantial handicaps to their employability and that VR services can be expected to improve their future employability. The first determination is made by a physician or psychologist; the latter is made by a VR counselor. In the course of determining whether rehabilitation would increase the employa- bility of a handicapped individual, VR counselors make substantial use of worker trait and worker function infonnation from the DOT, especially that related to physical demands and GED estimates. In assisting an individual to develop employment objectives the DOT iS relied on as an important counseling tool. As is the case in the VA rehabilitation program, VR counselors continue to use the third edition DOT while they await publication of fourth edition worker trait information. Those involved in public disability compensation and/or rehabilitation programs argue that there is no source of sufficiently detailed occupational information other than the DOT for making determinations concerning the existence of suitable alternative occupations or for the development of employment objectives. Other agencies active in the field, such as the Railroad Retirement Board and administrators of state workers' compen- sation programs, for example, apparently use the DOT in much the same ways as have been discussed. These materials are probably also widely used by the private disability insurance industry and by private organiza- tions involved in rehabilitation work. The rehabilitation services branch of Goodwill Industries, for example, reports that it makes frequent use of the DOT and other occupational information in the course of evaluating candidates for rehabilitation. Goodwill Industries has a 3-week evaluation program during which counselors assess the interests, potential, and skills of those referred to them for rehabilitation and training. During the vocational exploration process the DOT iS used in much the same way as the VA and VR counselors use it, especially the worker trait information. Furthermore, one evaluator at Goodwill Industries indicated that the DOT served an additional purpose: the job descriptions are often found useful in helping clients to accept the reality that they can no longer perform the same functions or do the same work they were capable of prior to becoming disabled.

72 VOCATIONAL AND OCCUPATIONAL EDUCATION WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS A fourth major use of the DOT iS by vocational educators. In the fields of vocational and occupational education, substantial use is made of occupational information, including the DOT and other products of the occupational analysis program. Broadly speaking, occupational informa- tion is used by vocational educators in program planning, counseling, and curriculum development and occasionally for record-keeping purposes. Each state receiving federal assistance for its vocational education program is required to prepare an annual state plan, which includes an analysis of labor supply and demand, in order to justify planned vocational programs. While some supply and demand data are generated locally, state vocational education planners rely heavily on information from the Department of Labor. When planning becomes specific about the occupational objectives of vocational programs, DOT titles and codes appear frequently alongside Office of Education program codes.4 As one individual noted, despite the use of OF program codes for vocational education, students are actually being prepared and trained for DOT occupations, and program planners and instructors must therefore rely heavily on the DOT to describe the occupations for which students are being prepared. Guidance counselors in the vocational education field use a host of occupational information products. These include the Occupational Outlook Handbook of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a wide range of guidance materials issued by commercial publishers, and materials produced by trade and professional associations as well as the DOT, the Job Guide for Young Workers, and other products of the occupational analysis program. Many of these sources of occupational information serve as references for the use of counselors themselves, while others, such as the Job Guidefor Young Workers end sometimes the DOT, are apparently used directly by vocational education students in planning their own employ- ment objectives. The use of materials such as the DOT by counselors is apparently inspired, at least in part, by the content of counselor education. Counseling 4The Office of Education program codes are unique six-digit codes identifying instructional programs recognized by the Office of Education. These codes are linked to DOT titles and codes in the U.S. Office of Education (1969) publication Vocational Education and Occupation in order to provide a way of reporting the relationship between education and work and to relate educational supply to labor market demand.

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 73 education programs generally include at least one course on occupational information that instructs student counselors how to use the DOT, the Occupational Outlook Handbook, and other related publications as sources of occupational information in the counseling process. Although most vocational curricula are actually developed at the state level, state departments of vocational education are usually grouped in regional consortia that are actively involved in developing priorities for curriculum development and in providing individual states with much of the technical and background information needed for curriculum develop- ment. The Vocational-Technical Consortium of States (V-TECS), associated with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, is probably the most active of these consortia. The V-TECS iS involved in producing task analyses that serve as background for the development of curricula by the consortium's 17 member states. Although the job descriptions in the DOT serve as an important reference, V-TECS supplements them with its own, more detailed job analyses prepared according to the Air Force and Army instructional systems analysis technique, a form of task analysis. Once V-TECS has identified a list of tasks associated with a particular job, it surveys incumbent workers to verify that they actually perform all of these tasks and to determine how integral they are to a job. On the basis of this analytical background, instructional objectives are identified for use in actual curriculum development. At the stage of actually designing a vocational education instructional program the GED and svP estimates and other worker trait information of the DOT are apparently relied on heavily. The GED and svP estimates are reported to be particularly useful in determining criteria for exiting from given vocational programs at the high school level and for entering training programs at the community college level. The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) iS currently involved in nationwide implementation of a vocational education data system (VEDS). The VEDS iS viewed as a method for accounting for "vocational education inputs, processes, outputs, and outcomes." In connection with the development and implementation of VEDS, the Office of Education is restructuring Handbook VI, its system of instructional program codes (see footnote 44. Program taxonomy will be structured around the Standard Occupational Classification (soc) system because NCES plans to switch over to use of the soc at the two-digit level. The DOT will continue to be used indirectly in reporting, since the soc is dependent on the DOT for occupational descriptions. Because occupational objectives will continue to be stated in terms of DOT titles, NCES anticipates routinely going from a nine-digit DOT code to a four-digit soc code and then to a two-digit soc code.

74 OTHER USERS OF THE DOT WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS In addition to the major users of the DOT described above, other agencies . . ~ use it In various ways. Department of Defense Each of the military services (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard) has its own system for classifying its military employees, which they justify by reference to the uniqueness of many, if not most, military jobs. Until recently, each service also had its own vocational testing and placement programs. Civilian employees of the military services have always been a part of the civil service system. The military has, however, occasionally used products of the occupa- tional analysis program when concerned with the transferability between military and civilian occupations. For example, because of a statutory requirement to maintain up-to-date records on individuals who could possibly be mobilized, the various reserve personnel centers across the country maintain a data set on reservists. In order to keep track of whether reservists are acquiring new skills useful to the military in case of mobilization, information is routinely collected on the reservists' current occupations. Several events appear to have caused the military services to become increasingly concerned with the interrelationship between military and civilian occupations. The advent of the all-volunteer army has resulted in a need for the military to "sell itself'' in the recruitment process to a much greater extent than was previously necessary. As a result it has become necessary to demonstrate to potential recruits what their military career prospects might be and how military training and experience relate to civilian occupations that could be pursued after completion of military service. The difficulties encountered by returning Vietnam-era veterans in securing civilian employment also stimulated the military's concern with the transferability of military to civilian employment. Upon release from the military an individual is issued separation papers that include information on his or her military occupational history coded to the DOT in anticipation of the possibility that employment might be sought through an Employment Service office. The DOT iS also apparently used regularly as a source of information on civilian employment as part of the "out- processing" counseling process. A document used both by military recruiters and by counselors at separation centers is the Military/Civilian Occupational Source Book (U.S. Department of Defense, 1975), assembled in 1975 jointly by the Depart

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 75 ment of Defense Military Enlistment Processing Command agency (MEPCOM) and analysts from the Texas occupational analysis staff. Analysts trained military classifiers in the use of the DOT and also were involved in assigning DOT codes to military occupations. The Source Book was created to serve as a single reference document for information on the military's enlisted occupations and, where possible, to equate those occupations with civilian occupations identified in the DOT. In preparing the Source Book the Department of Defense formulated composite job statements for the five military services in those occupational areas in which commonality of job tasks existed. A second edition of the Source Book (U.S. Department of Defense, 1978) was prepared with the assistance of the Texas occupational analysis field center and released in January 1978 to coincide with the publication of the fourth edition DOT. For each military occupation the Source Book presents information on the military job title, the U.S. Once of Education career cluster to which it relates, the civilian (DOT) title, the nine-digit code that appears in the fourth edition DOT, a composite job statement, a qualifications summary, and informa- tion on related military service jobs. Recently, some use has been made of the DOT in the military's personnel planning efforts. For example, the Department of the Navy is involved in projecting the number and types of civilian employees it will need in the near future. Although Navy civilian jobs are normally described with civil service titles and codes, projected slots are also being assigned DOT codes because of the current effort to relate the military's own needs to the outside labor market. The Bureau of Naval Personnel, which projects noncivilian manpower needs, is also apparently involved in an effort to relate military and civilian codes. Office of Personnel Management The Office of Personnel Management (OPM, formerly U.S. Civil Service Commission) classification structure is unrelated to the DOT scheme. In fact, the DOT does not include descriptions of occupations unique to the federal civil service. Despite an atmosphere of uncooperation between the OPM and the Department of Labor, occasional use is made of the DOT by the OPM to assess transferability between federal service and private industry jobs. For instance, the Personnel Research and Development Center of the OPM'S Bureau of Policy and Standards uses the DOT as a cross-reference to compare federal and private industry jobs. Recently, the Bureau of Recruiting and Examining became involved in an effort to prepare model federal service occupational briefs intended for the use of OPM recruiters. The DOT was used in this project as a reference to assist in

76 WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS the identification and development of "common use" job titles and descriptions that would be understandable outside the context of the federal service. Development of the Standard Occupational Classification The DOT and the occupational analysis program on which it is based have played a crucial role in the development of the Standard Occupational Classification (sac), a system now being implemented in a wide variety of federal agencies. The soc was constructed under the aegis of the Office of Management and Budget and is now, like most standard classification systems used in the United States, under the jurisdiction of the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards in the Department of Commerce. Its structure was developed by a number of technical work groups in which all of the major federal agencies concerned with occupational data were represented; the office's Interagency Occupational Classification Committee took the coordinating role in this effort. Representatives of the Department of Labor and the Bureau of the Census were particularly active in the development of the soc, and both agencies lent key staff to the effort to assist in implementing technical work group recommendations and to review occupational definitions contained in the soc. The content of these definitions, however, is heavily dependent on the descriptions included in the DOT. The Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards has not had, nor is there any indication that it will have in the future, a research staff whose efforts can be directed to gathering the information on work content that is essential to keeping occupational definitions up to date. In this situation the soc must continue to rely on the contributions of other programs; the occupational analysis program is, in fact, the only comprehensive source of information available. Bureau of the Census The system used by the U.S. Bureau of the Census in classifying occupation returns in the Census of Population, the Current Population Survey, and other special surveys is substantially different from that found in the DOT. The alphabetical index used by the Census Bureau in its coding operation presents a listing of some 30,000 entries that have appeared on schedule returns, together with the census code for each, but includes no descriptive material. Bureau staff therefore consult occupational descrip- tions in the DOT as an aid in allocating schedule entries not included in the census alphabetical index listing. In the past they have also consulted staff

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Senice 77 of the Division of Occupational Analysis to ascertain the work content of new occupations. STATE GOVERNMENT USERS: THE SOICC GROUP To supplement the preceding discussion on institutional users, results from the survey of persons identified as DOT users by each State Occupational Information Coordinating Committee (stucco are discussed in this section to provide an indication of the use of the DOT by state-level agencies. The analysis is restricted to those who reported that they have ever used the DOT (89 percent of the respondents).5 As in the analysis of the purchaser sample, we consider the types of organizations using the DOT and the purposes for which it is used, the nature and frequency of use, how essential the DOT iS to the ongoing operation of the organization, and how adequate the DOT iS for the purposes for which it is used. Appendix A provides frequency distributions on each variable for the sock group. Our purpose in soliciting responses to the DOT use questionnaire from individuals identified by sock representatives was to increase the probability of discovering what use of the DOT iS made by state agencies, a category not well represented in the probability sample. In the solace sample, 62 percent of the respondents outside the Employment Service are employed in other state government work. The only other types of organizations represented to any significant extent are county or local government agencies (8 percent) and educational institutions (23 percent). Table 4-9 provides an overview of the type of work performed by type of employer. As we learned from the DOT purchaser sample, the primary use made of the DOT in educational institutions is by career and vocational counselors; secondary use is by those in vocational education. Those in state government agencies using the DOT are in counseling and vocational education or are engaged in projecting labor force trends and disseminat- ing occupational information. Seventy-four percent of the respondents reported that they had used the fourth edition DOT within the past year: 36 percent reported regular use and 38 percent reported occasional use. On the survey date, some of the respondents were still making use of the third edition DOT; 62 percent reported at least occasional use of the third edition during the past year. This is not surprising, since at the time of the survey the supplement to the 5Since the primary interest in this section is in exploring DOT use by agencies outside the Employment Service, 68 ES employees (representing 24 percent of the 283 respondents) were deleted from the analysis. When ES employees and those who reported that they did not use the DOT are deleted from the sample, the effective sample size is 186. Use of the DOT by the 68 ES respondents is explored in chapter 3.

78 o so V o VO :^ o - o a' o o as o o ._ ID ._ ._ on C~ 4_ C~ C~ L~ m o LL1 o :^ Ct o U. U. 03 Pe ^, O 5~ =: ~i 0 0 C~ _ ~: 0 a, C _ ~ C: ~ ;> o o ~ v - S~ ~ ;> - ~ O V, V ~ 00 00 0 0\ O ~ ~0 00 ~00 ~ ~_ _ O O O O O O O O ~ ~ ~ ~O _ O C~ ~_ O ~ O _ ~_ - .0 .o C~ C~ .- _ ° o o :^ o ._ - C~ - ._ Ct S S~ oo ~. - -~ ctct c: o~ ;> ~ ~ ~ ~ o e ~ o o . - - e <4 o ~ . - . - e 'e a' ~ O s: ~ . ~ ~ - c) ~ o ~ ~ - - ~ o a) ~ ~ ~ o o oo ~ ~ o~ ~ 2 ~ ~: C~ .o ~ ~ ~ ~: . _ t_ ° ._ 3 U, .s .m ~ au ~ O ° ~

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Senice 79 fourth edition containing worker trait data (especially useful for counsel- ing work) had not yet been published. Table 4-10 indicates the percentage of respondents using each part of the DOT, cross-classified by the type of work performed. As was true for the DOT purchaser sample, the state-level group uses the DOT especially for its dictionary capabilities and for administrative and statistical reporting reasons: 90 percent of the respondents indicated that they had used the job titles and definitions, and 80 percent reported that they had used the occupational codes in the past year. The use of these component parts of the DOTiS high regardless of the type of work performed. Unlike the DOT purchaser sample a majority of respondents also reported using the specific vocational preparation (svP) codes, the most common use being to estimate training times for on-thejob training contracts. Estimating the amount of training time required for a job is especially useful in counseling, vocational education, and work involving the dissemination of occupational information. Eighty-seven percent of the sonic group reported that discontinuance of the DOT would have an adverse effect on their work; 51 percent reported that discontinuance would seriously disrupt their work. Discontinuance of the DOT would particularly affect those involved in three types of work: counseling, employment placement, and projecting labor force trends and disseminating occupational information. Further evidence that the state- level users find the DOT essential to their work is that regardless of type of work performed, fewer than a third of the respondents know of substitute sources to which they could turn for the same kind of occupational information they currently derive from the DOT. Other kinds of occupa- tional information found useful by the majority of the sync respondents include the BES wage survey and the Occupational Outlook Handbook. It is clear from the data presented above that a majority of these respondents view the DOT as being essential to their work. In addition, nearly 60 percent of the respondents perceive the DOT as being very adequate for the purposes for which they use it. With one exception (teaching and research) the majority of respondents in every category view the DOT as being very adequate. Only 3 percent of the sonic respondents view the DOT as being inadequate for their purposes. Although a majority of respondents view the DOT as being adequate, there were suggestions as to how the fourth edition DOT could be improved. In particular, 54 percent indicated that career ladders should be incorporated into the next edition of the DOT. In addition, a significant minority indicated that further editions should be bound in hard cover and should include the full array of worker trait information.

80 o a~ o U) C~ st o o o~ ._ V, - - o s~ o C~ o Ct C) o o 3 o CL ;^ (,,, o _ =3 6 ~ o ~ V o 3o ~ s ._ ~ s ao - o ~ ~ ._ ~ o o Ct o ·_ Ct~ _ au 3 o ~ ~0 V, O ~ ~ oo ~ ·0 ct ~ ca c: Ct ~ ~ CL - au _ O Ct ~ C: O o ._ _ Cd C~ ~ S~, 3 O O ~ ._ ~ Ct ~ ~ - ._ O ·- ~ ·- D ~ O S 3 CT' O ~) O c) ~ ~ c) o - ca - 0m o O - O ~C ~O oo _ a ~oo ~- ) ') _ oo ~n ~c ~c ~v ~oo oo r ~ ~_ _ _ _ ~_ ~0 oo _ ~V) _ V) ~> ~c, oo ~oo r ~_ ~r ~_ ~ ~_ ~r~ cr ~oo v ~v ~r) r~ O ~rO O O ~ oo ~_ ~ ~r~ oo ~ ~_ ~ ~O oo (~} ~~ 00 ~00 ~v ~r ~ r ~oo r~ ~ c ~ E ~ i ~ ~ ~ ~ _ ~ L ~ ~c . ~

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service RESEARCH USES OF THE DOT 81 The Dictionary of Occupational Titles has attracted much attention from social scientists over the years. Sociologists, psychologists, and economists have found the DOT useful in a broad range of research activities. An annotated bibliography of research publications referencing the DOT (see Appendix C) describes specific uses of DOT information. More than 150 articles, papers, and books are cited in the bibliography, indicating that the DOT has been widely used as a research tool. The majority of these articles appear in academic journals and were located with the aid of the corporate section of the Social Science Citation Index, from which we were able to find citations for works published between 1969 and 1979. A survey of researchers and citations in articles already located supplemented the bibliography. These sources were especially helpful in identifying unpub- lished papers and books and articles published prior to 1969, which do not appear in the Social Science Citation Index. This section describes the various research uses made of the DOT, considering the classification, titles and definitions, the worker functions, training time scales, and other worker traits. The section concludes with a review of evaluations of the DOT by academic researchers, and some problems encountered by social scientists who use the DOT for research purposes are also discussed. It should be noted that almost all of the research literature reviewed here makes use of material from the third edition DOT. Since the fourth edition was not published until December 1977, almost no published research to date has been based on the fourth edition. This fact is particularly important when one is evaluating research purporting to show differences in the characteristics of jobs held mainly by men and those held mainly by women. There is strong reason to suspect that the third edition worker function scales undervalue jobs held mainly by women and that this bias was corrected in the fourth edition (see chapter 7~. Hence substantive findings in this area based on the third edition should be treated with great caution. CLASSIFICATION Many researchers have used the DOT code for classification purposes. Frequently, the socioeconomic distribution of a sample is described in terms of the first digit of the DOT code (Schilling et al., 1977; Tinsley and Gaughan, 1975; Walls et al., 1977) or in a more general scheme of four classes (Lindholm and Touliatos, 1976; Lindholm et al., 1978; Seybolt and Gruenfeld, 1976; Touliatos et al., 1978~.

82 WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS To obtain a sample of occupations representative of the U.S. occupation- al structure, Tinsley and Weiss (1974) drew occupations from each of the first-digit DOT code groups in proportion to the number of workers in the United States employed in those groups. (The authors did not specify how they determined the distribution of workers in these groups.) The code was also used to determine job similarity in a study of the sources and benefits of workers' skills (Roomkin and Somers, 1974~. Even social scientists far removed from occupational analysis and economics have found the DOT codes useful. For instance, clinical psychologists Brown and Pool (1974) matched brain-injured subjects with a control group on premorbid occupational level. However, they did not specifically define "occupational level." JOB TITLES AND DEFINITIONS The job titles and definitions provide researchers with a standard system for identifying and describing occupations. This information has been incorporated into several vocational guidance tools (e.g., the Vocational Card Sort (Cooper, 1976), the Non-Sexist Vocational Card Sort (Dewey, 1974), and the Occupational Reinforcer Patterns (Borgen et al., 1972~. In addition, Remenyi and Fraser (1977) examined the effects of occupational information on students' occupational perceptions by adding DOT definitions to the titles, and Sterne (1974) used the titles in a study of the validity of the Kuder Occupational Interest Inventory. WORKER TRAITS AND WORKER FUNCTIONS The worker trait data and worker function scales have received by far more attention in the research community than any other part of the DOT. Data, People, and Things The worker function scales, which measure a job's complexity in relation to data, people, and things, have been used in many capacities. Sociologists and economists have attempted to describe the distribution of these job characteristics in the U.S. labor market. For instance, Dubnoff (1978) found that a job's complexity is inversely related to the percentage of employees who are female, and Lucas (1974) reported that complexity in relation to people is negatively correlated with percentage of employees who are black. Brown (1975) examined the distribution by race and sex of workers who hold discretionary jobs, defined as those jobs with a data or things rating of less than 5 or with a people rating of less than 6.

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 83 In a study of the status of jobs held typically by men and by women, McLaughlin (1978) used a modified version of the worker function scales. Spenner (1977, 1980) included the worker functions among his variables in a series of studies on intergenerational occupational transmission. He found that complexity is a factor only in the father-son occupational relationship. The worker functions have been useful in applied research as well. Using the worker function scales and training time to generate five orders of job similarity, Fine (1957) proposed an approach to the transferability of skills that would be useful in vocational counseling and in designing training programs. Hemmens et al. (1978) compared the job tasks and skills of social policy planners, coded according to the worker functions, with training received in professional schools and found serious discrepancies. Modified versions of the DOT worker function scales were also incorporat- ed into Dumas and Muthard's (1971) job analysis method for health- related professions. A number of studies adopted the concept of worker functions without the actual scales. Kohn and Schooler (1969) developed a measure of substantive complexity, closely modeled after the DOT measures, to study workers' values and orientations. In a later paper (Kohn and Schooler, 1973) on the relationship between occupational experience and psychologi- cal functioning, they used the DOT worker function scales as a source of external validation for their own index as well as for assessing the complexity of past jobs. Mortimer (1974, 1976), in her work on intergenerational occupational transmission patterns, used the DOT inter- est variables to determine the functional foci of work (that is, the complexity of a job's relationship to data, people, and things). Finally, Prediger (1976) used worker trait and worker function variables to create a two-dimensional map relating workers and jobs. Training Time The DOT'S two training time scales, general educational development (GED) and specific vocational preparation (svP), have proven to be important sources of information for the social scientist. In studying the educational and skill level structure of the U.S. labor market, both Kolstad (1977) and Dubnoff (1978) found that GED and svP are negatively correlated with percentage of employees in each occupation who are female. Lucas's (1977) hedonic wage equations indicate that workers receive higher monetary as well as "psychic" wages for higher levels of GED and svP. The svP measure was used in a similar study of wage attainment by Stolzenberg (1975~. Kalleberg and Hudis (1979) reported

84 WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS that for men in their late careers, svP has a significant effect on wage increase in general, especially for those who did not change occupations or employers. Prompted by Miller's (1971b) comparison of workers' educational attainment and the required GED of their occupations, which implies that many members of the labor market are overtrained, Kalleberg and Sorenson (1973) and Coburn (1975) studied the effects of discrepancies between training and requirements on job attitudes and health. Finally, GED was found to be positively correlated with the employment stability of male parolees and probationers (G. Gottfredson and D. Lipstein, 1975~. Other Worker Traits The other worker traits have appeared in the literature most often in descriptions of labor force composition and as variables in economists' wage equations. Using DOt temperament 3 (supervision) and 4 (autono- my), Dubnoff (1978) found that the relative growth of women's employ- ment is likely to be greatest in occupations in which supervisor was high and least in occupations requiring worker autonomy. An earlier study revealed that negative working conditions and heavy physical demands are in general less common in jobs held by women but are almost as frequent for jobs held by black women as for those held by white men (Lucas, 1974~. Lucas (1977) later reported that workers receive higher wages in compensation for repetitive routine (temperaments) and obnoxious physi- cal environments (working conditions and physical demands). Hartog (1977) presented empirical support for his multicapability theory of income distribution using the DOT aptitude scales matched with census income data. USE OF DOT CONCEPTS IN OTHER SCALES AND CLASSIFICATIONS DOT concepts have been incorporated into a number of scales, inventories, and classification systems. The Minnesota Job Requirements Question- naire (MIRQ) assesses each of the nine DOT worker aptitude requirements by five items. Occupational reinforcer patterns, which describe the stimulus conditions available in the work environment for the satisfaction of worker needs, are based on the combined Minnesota Job Description Questionnaire ratings of supervisors and/or employees. Occupational reinforcer patterns for 148 occupations are presented alphabetically by

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 85 DOT title (Borgen et al., 1972; Rosen et al., 1972~. Bemis et al. (1973, 1974) developed a structure of 62 occupational ability patterns using the DOT aptitudes and the worker trait groups. Later, Dawis and Lofquist (1974, 1975) cross-classified the occupational ability patterns and the occupation- al reinforcer patterns, obtaining as a result psychologically homogeneous groups of occupations ("axons). They embedded the DOT'S occupational groupings-worker traits and worker functions in the scheme now known as the Minnesota Occupational Classification System (MOCS). The American College Testing Program Occupational Classification System (ACT-OCS) incorporates all occupations listed in the third edition DOT in a structure derived from analyses of the worker traits and worker functions (Prediger, 1976~. Holland's six-category occupational classification, based on a theory of personality types, has often been subdivided on the basis of GED level (G. Gottfredson, 1977; G. Gottfredson et al., 1975; L. Gottfredson, 1978~; Viernstein (1972) has developed two methods for translating DOT codes into Holland codes. In assessing the status of occupations, Caston (1978) replaced the Duncan socioeconomic index with the GED and svP scales. The DOT has also been recommended as a tool in coding occupations and industries into the detailed 1970 census categories (Featherman et al., 1975; Temme, 1975) and the International Standard Classification of Occupations (Treiman, 1977~. Vocational psychologists have turned to the DOT in developing other counseling aids. The Vocational Card Sort (Cooper, 1976), the Non-Sexist Vocational Card Sort (Dewey, 1974) and the SPART inventory (Ekpo-Ufot, 1976) are several examples. Time Share Corporation's (1976) computer- based Guidance Information System makes available information from the DOT to aid clients in choosing appropriate occupational categories. Finally, aspects of the DOT have been incorporated into a number of occupational classifications and occupational dictionaries developed else- where. We have already discussed the influence of the DOT on the Standard Occupational Classification (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1977~. In addition, the DOT served as a model for the International Standard Classification of Occupations (International Labour Office, 1958, 1968~. Two foreign occupational dictionaries are heavily influenced by the DOT: the Japanese dictionary of occupational titles is an almost verbatim translation of the second edition DOT, and the Canadian Classification and Dictionary of Occupations 1971 (Canadian Minister of Manpower and Immigration, 1971) acknowledges the use of certain features of the American DOT. In fact, the Canadian Dictionary includes for each occupation a "qualifications profile" consisting of ratings of GED, SVP, aptitudes, interests, temperaments, and physical demands.

86 EVALUATION OF DOT DATA WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS Although the DOT has proven to be a valuable source of information for social science research, there are serious drawbacks that prevent even more widespread use. The incompatibility of the DOT classification with other classification systems and their accompanying social statistics seriously limits its use, since researchers are often interested in relating the worker trait and worker function scales to data collected on general population samples. For instance, until recently it has been difficult to relate the vast wealth of census data to the DOT scales. A number of projects have attempted to cross-code the two systems. The Spenner-Temme file (Spenner et al., 1980) makes available weighted estimates of 17 occupa- tional characteristics for the 595 1970 Census occupation industry categories (see also Temme (1975~. These include 10 third edition DOT characteristics: DATA, PEOPLE, and THINGS; GED; SVP; and temperaments 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8.6 Spenner is currently expanding the file to include 20 additional DOT characteristics. The methods used in generating these measures as well as some evidence on their reliability and validity are presented by Spenner (1980~. Miller (1971a) describes work coding the April 1971 Current Population Survey with 1970 Census codes and third edition DOT codes (the actual coding was done by occupational analysis field center personnel) and discusses the advantages of being able to move from one system to another. Similarly, Broom et al. (no date, 1977) had the 1971 Australian Census Classification of Occupations (ACCO) coded with DOT DATA, PEOPLE, and THINGS scores in order to study new aspects of occupational mobility patterns. The DOT data would be of much greater use in social science research if steps were taken to make the DOT classification system compatible with other widely used occupational classifications. The newly developed Standard Occupational Classification (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1977) goes some way toward meeting this objective. A second major drawback to the use of DOT data in research is the lack of reliability estimates for the worker trait and worker function scales. The development of these scales has been so poorly documented that researchers cannot be altogether confident about the validity of their results. Although a number of articles trace the history of the current DOT data (Fine, 1955, 1968b; Fine and Heinz, 1957, 1958; Scoville, 1965; Studdiford, 1951, 1953), they have been largely descriptive. Very little fin Appendix F we offer similar estimates for eight fourth edition DOT occupational characteristics: DATA, PEOPLE, and THINGS; GED; SVP; STRENGTH; PHYSDEM (physical demands); and ENVIRON (environmental conditions). See the introduction to the appendix for additional details.

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 87 empirical evidence supporting the scales' reliablity and validity is available. Social scientists have been quick to point out this deficiency (Desmond and Weiss, 1973; Pratzner and Stump, 1977; Scoville, 1966; Walther, 1960; Witt and Naherny, 1975), which has undoubtedly discouraged more extensive use of these scales. Several studies have attempted to remedy this deficiency. Sainty's (1974) validation of the third edition worker trait groups was performed by comparing its factor structure with the factor structure of a random sample of 800 of the 4,000 jobs used as the basis for the DOT. Fine (1957) found that four experienced occupational analysts were able to determine Minnesota Occupational Rating Scale values fairly reliably for 37 jobs from Functional Occupational Classification Project data (worker trait and work performed dimensions), and Broom et al. (1977) attempted to validate the worker function scales in terms of the worker traits required by different jobs in the DOT. These studies, however, mark only the beginning of an effort needed to assess the reliability and validity of DOT data and scales. Chapter 7 describes these issues in greater detail and presents the committee's own reliability studies. USE AND DISTRIBUTION OF OTHER OCCUPATIONAL ANALYSIS PRODUCTS In addition to the Dictionary of Occupational Titles the Occupational Analysis Branch of the Division of Occupational Analysis publishes or distributes a series of career brochures and pamphlets. Some of these publications are initiated by the national office, while others are initiated locally, either by field center staff or by local Employment Service personnel in consultation with field center staff. The Job Search Branch of the Division of Occupational Analysis is also responsible for distributing brochures, news releases, and other labor market information directly to occupational information consumers (primarily local Employment Service offices). This section provides a brief description of how these publications are distributed and who uses them. The committee approached the task of determining the use of occupational analysis products other than the DOT in three ways: 1. The Government Printing Office (GPO) was asked to provide a list of names and addresses of those persons who had purchased at least one copy of a publication of the Division of Occupational Analysis during the period July 1977 through June 1978. Estimates were then derived of the total number of requests and total number of copies purchased during this

88 WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS period. In addition, estimates of the total number of publications printed were obtained from Department of Labor representatives. 2. As part of our probability survey of DOT purchasers and survey of state-level users, we asked respondents to indicate the frequency with which they use various other publications of the occupational analysis program. 3. During interviews at local Employment Service offices, ES personnel were asked about their knowledge and frequency of use of various OA publications. OCCUPATIONAL ANALYSIS BRANCH The Occupational Analysis Branch of the Division of Occupational Analysis publishes a series of career-related brochures and pamphlets. These products range from in-house publications, such as the Handbook for Analyzing Jobs, to career brochures, such as Career Opportunities in the Telephone and Telegraph Industries, Occupations in Library Science, and Career Opportunities in the Trucking Industry. (For a listing of OA publications, see Appendix D.) Although most of the national career publications still in print are available for sale through the Government Printing Office, the bulk of these brochures are distributed through local Employment Service offices, including model job information sites. This material is also distributed on a more informal basis by occupational analysts at the national office to various other government agencies and other organizations, including those that helped to produce the brochures. Occupational analysts, for example, worked with representatives from the Division of Associated Health Professions (Bureau of Health Resources Administration) and the National Health Council in developing the Health Careers Guidebook and with the Environmental Protection Agency in the development of the Environmental Protection Careers Guidebook; copies of the brochures were sent to these agencies. The Employment and Training Administration's office of information also distributes single copies of OA brochures to those who request them. On the basis of the results from the DOT purchaser sample and the survey of state-level users it appears that the biggest consumers of these publications (other than Employment Service personnel) are career and vocational counselors, career educators, rehabilitation counselors, and employment placement personnel. For example, the Job Corps national office recently began distributing copies of the Career Opportunities and Career Guidebook Series to all Job Corps centers, regional offices, and agencies. The state-initiated brochures also receive their primary distribution through local Employment Service offices. In California, for example,

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 89 publications relevant to Employment Service activities are automatically distributed to a mailing list of local offices in the federal region in which the field center is located. The field center distributes these publications free to anyone who requests a small number, most notably school vocational counselors or other personnel involved with career guidance. JOB SEARCH BRANCH The Job Search Branch within the Division of Occupational Analysis distributes labor market information in a variety of forms. Working with the Employment Service's job bank master file, personnel of the Job Search Branch produce and distribute four major job search products (see chapter 5~. The Job Search Branch sends out 700 copies of the Job Bank Openings Summary in microfiche form each month. The consumers of this information include primarily Employment Service offices as well as CETA prime sponsors, state and federal agencies (e.g., the Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation and the Veteran Administration), and CETA contractors. More than 400 copies of Job Bank Frequently Listed Openings (IOB-FLO), in either microfiche or hard copy and in either national or local format, are distributed monthly to the same kinds of organizations receiving Job Bank Openings. About 165,000 copies of Occupations in Demand are distributed monthly, primarily to Employment Service local offices but also to secondary and college-level guidance counselors and other job placement personnel. Finally, 70 sets of the Labor Market Information Analytical Table Series (LMI-ATS) are sent monthly to the research and analysis chiefs of the state EM! offices. Table 4-1 1 presents the results of the surveys of the DOT purchaser and sock samples regarding use of other occupational analysis materials as well as information collected from the Department of Labor (on the total number of copies printed) and from the Government Printing Office (on the number of copies sold between July 1977 and June 1978~. Since the primary distribution point for these publications is local Employment Service offices (see chapter 3 for details on Employment Service use of these products), it is not surprising that few of the large number of printed copies were purchased through GPO during the period reviewed. Of those publications still in print, only Job Descriptions and Organizational Analysis for Hospitals, published in 1971, is still in relatively high demand through GPO. Career Opportunities in the Telephone arid Telegraph Industries, published recently, is also requested more often than the other publications. Health Careers Guidebook, the most recent update of which was published in 1979, is also a popular item, as indicated by the large number of copies printed for distribution. One reason for the low sales of

go WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS TABLE 4-! ~ Percentage Using Other Occupational Analysis (OA) Products a Total DOT SOICC Number Gal OA Publication Purchasers Group Printed b Sales C Career Opportunities in the Telephone and Telegraph Industries (1977) 8 14 20,000 357 Career Opportunities in the Trucking Industry(1978) 12 18 20,000 204 Handbookfor Analyzing Jobs (1972) 15 25 7,500 - Health Careers Guidebook(1973) 24 25 72,000 Job Descriptions and Organizational AnalysisforHospitals(1971) 11 21 15,000 560 Job Guidefor Young Workers (1970) 13 19 40,000 - Occupations in Electronic Computing Systems (1972) 9 15 25,000 138 Occupations in Library Science (1973) 9 10 20,000 75 Task Analysis inventories (Series 1) (1973) 7 17 - 76 Job Bank Openings Summary (monthly) 17 29 Frequently Listed Openings (monthly) 19 31 Occupations in Demand (monthly) 28 37 Labor Market Information Analytical Table Series (monthly) 16 28 N (309) (186) a Users of other occupational analysis products are defined as those reporting frequent or occasional use of publication in the past year. Those not using the specified publication include those who never use it, those who are not familiar with it, and those not respond ing to the question. b The total number printed are estimates made in consultation with Department of Labor representatives. Publications with no estimate are monthlies (see text for distribu tion figure) or the number is unknown. CGPo sales are defined as number of copies of publication sold through the Government Printing Office during the year period July 1977 through June 1978. Publications with no estimates are out of print or unavailable through GPO.

Use of the DOT Outside the U.S. Employment Service 91 some publications is that they are nearing the end of their run and are due to be revised. The data in the first two columns of Table 4-11 indicate that small but identifiable subsets of the DOT purchasers and state-level users recognize and use these other occupational analysis products. The Job Search Branch monthlies are used more frequently than other publications, but Occupations in Demand is the only publication recognized and used by at least one third of the group of state-level users. SUMMARY Since its first publication as a job placement tool for the U.S. Employment Service, the Dictionary of Occupational Titles has been used for a wide variety of additional purposes by many individuals and organizations outside the Employment Service. This chapter describes these uses on the basis of data derived from three primary sources: (1) a probability survey of purchasers of the fourth edition DOT, (2) a series of interviews with personnel at federal agencies targeted as DOT users, supplemented by a survey of state-level DOT users, and (3) a survey of researchers and review of published and unpublished work using or criticizing the DOT. The results from the probability survey of DOT purchasers suggest that a wide variety of organizations use the DOT in their work, especially educational institutions, government agencies, private for-profit compa- nies, and nonprofit agencies. The DOT users in these organizations are engaged mainly in career and vocational counseling, library reference, rehabilitation counseling, personnel management, and employment place- ment. The DOT iS most heavily used for its dictionary function: 95 percent of the DOT purchasers report that they use the DOT'S job titles and definitions. Another frequently used part of the DOT iS the classification and code structure: three fifths of the purchasers report using the DOT codes primarily for administrative and statistical reporting reasons. Although certain parts of the DOT are used more than others, there is an identifiable subset of organizations using every major DOT component. A total of 88 percent of the DOT purchasers, especially those in rehabilitation counseling, vocational education, labor force projections, and occupational information dissemination and educators in the counsel- ing field, reported that discontinuing the DOT would adversely affect their work; 36 percent reported that the impact would be large or that discontinuance would seriously disrupt their work. Additionally, two thirds of the respondents reported that the DOT was very adequate for the purpose for which they use it. In offering suggestions as to how the DOT

92 WORK, JOBS, AND OCCUPATIONS might be improved, a majority of the purchaser sample indicated that career ladders should be incorporated into future editions; a strong interest was also expressed in having future editions bound in hard cover. Interviews with institutional users revealed four major institutional uses of the DOT: (1) Agencies such as the Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training use the DOT for employment training purposes. (2) Some agencies such as the Bureau of Disability Insurance of the Social Security Administration use the DOT for disability determination. (3) Other agencies such as the Veterans Administration use the DOT for rehabilita- tion and employment counseling. (4) Vocational educators use the DOT for program planning, counseling, and curriculum development. The results from the survey of state-level users corroborates these findings: the two primary uses are for counseling and vocational education. The state-level users make substantial use of the job titles, definitions, and codes (as do the respondents from the DOT purchaser sample); they also report frequent use of svP estimates of training time. The DOT has also been used by sociologists, psychologists, and economists in a broad range of research activities. The DOT code is frequently used to describe the socioeconomic distribution of subject samples and to match experimental groups with control groups on occupational class and skill level. The worker traits and worker functions have been used in many capacities, most notably in describing the distribution of job characteristics across various sectors of the labor force and in examining shifts in labor force composition. Economists often turn to these scales when studying the determinants of wages, and psychologists use this information in studying the relationship between occupational characteristics and psychological functioning as well as effects on performance. In addition, the DOT has been a valuable resource in the more applied areas of vocational psychology and counseling. A number of new scales, inventories, and classification systems have also incorporated DOT data and scales. Although the Dictionary of Occupational Titles has become useful in many organizations and agencies outside the Employment Service, there is no firm evidence that the other products of the occupational analysis program have reached a similarly large audience. Although the monthly job information summaries are widely distributed within the Employment Service, they are used by a relatively small number of outside users. Career brochures are not widely used either inside or outside the Employment Service, yet each of these publications is used by an identifiable minority of each of the user samples.

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Various editions of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles have served as the Employment Service's basic tool for matching workers and jobs. The Dictionary of Occupational Titles has also played an important role in establishing skill and training requirements and developing Employment Service testing batteries for specific occupations. However, the role of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles has been called into question as a result of planned changes in the operation of the Employment Service.

A plan to automate the operations of Employment Service offices using a descriptive system of occupational keywords rather than occupational titles has led to a claim that a dictionary of occupational titles and the occupational research program that produces it are outmoded. Since the automated keyword system does not rely explicitly on defined occupational titles, it is claimed that the new system would reduce costs by eliminating the need for a research program to supply the occupational definitions.

In light of these considerations, the present volume evaluates the future need for the Dictionary of Occupational Titles.

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