Abstract
Seven youths from a residential treatment facility for juvenile offenders served as subjects in a study designed to train minimally literate individuals to read and complete job applications. An item analysis was conducted on applications from 30 employers in a metropolitan area. Based on that analysis, a Master Employment Application was created to be representative of a typical job application; it required 35 separate items of biographic information from the prospective employee. A nine-step training program was conducted in a Visual Response System classroom, a specially designed room in which students respond simultaneously on individual overhead projectors. The training program progressed from matching items projected by the teacher to writing responses to biographic items on overhead projector transparencies of the Master Employment Application. A multiple baseline design across sets of biographic items was used to evaluate the program's effectiveness. All subjects' scores on the Master Employment Application increased as a function of the training program and were maintained in a two week follow-up. Students also increased their performance on three real job applications used to assess generalization.
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