A Skills Map: The General and Specific Competencies Required in Different Occupations. Progress Report.

To aid in assessing the employability of individuals and of various groups of individuals in different types of occupations, the general abilities and specific skills required of workers in different occupations were studied. Data on a comprehensive set of occupations were obtained from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) job ratings and from the archive of Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ) research. Factor analyses of these data indicated that jobs can be characterized by three major competency dimensions: academic aptitudes, psychomotor aptitudes, and dealing with people. Occupations were classified into 36 groups according to their demands for each of these general competencies. The specific skills, activities, and working conditions of individual occupations were examined to show to what extent the jobs within the occupational groups vary in their more specific demands. Academic aptitude was found to be only one dimension distinguishing jobs; different jobs required very different combinations of abilities. Implications were derived for designing high school programs to further the employability of youth with only low to moderate academic skills. (Appendixes, amounting to approximately one-half of the report, include data and materials used in the study, including listings of abilities and activities related to various occupations.) (Author/YLB)