Piloting a method for comparing the demand of vocational qualifications with general qualifications

Abstract

Frequently, researchers are tasked with comparing the demand of vocational and general qualifications, and methods of comparison often rely on human judgement. Therefore, the research aims to develop an instrument to compare vocational and general qualifications, pilot the instrument and explore how experts judge demand. Reading a range of OCR (Oxford Cambridge and Royal Society of Arts Examinations) level 2 specifications illustrated that they included knowledge, skills and understanding from five domains; the affective, cognitive, interpersonal, metacognitive, and psychomotor domains. Therefore, these domains were included in the instrument. Four cognate units were included in the study. Four experts participated, each with familiarity with at least one unit. Each expert read pairs of unit specifications and judged which was more demanding in each domain (affective, cognitive, interpersonal, metacognitive and psychomotor). Subsequently, they completed a questionnaire about their experience. The results are presented. It was found that the demands instrument was suitable for comparing the demand of cognate units from vocational and general qualifications.