A primer for handling missing values in the analysis of education and training data

There was no chapter on organization and administration in the October 1962 REVIEW which last summarized research in vocational, technical, and practical arts education, although two studies of this type were reported in an introductory chapter. Many of the studies of educational organization, administration, and finance reported in the October 1967 issue of the REVIEW have implications for vocaticnal education, but few dealt wiih the problems peculiar to vocational education. During the six years since research in vocational education was last reviewed, it has probably been given more attention than it had received during all the years preceding 1962. Funds, personnel, and facilities for research have become available from federal, state, and private sources. Research in the field, long undernourished, developed almost explosively. The period should therefore be treated in an unusual way. Several significant new agencies for research in vocational education have not had time to complete very many projects, but attention will be given to their potential. Public policy decisions condition what can be done in providing organization, administration, finance, personnel, and facilities; hence, studies of policy and planning, organization and administration, public information, and public relationships will be included in this review. Several investigations, including some which have had great impact, are not reviewed in this chapter because they have not been reported in standard publications and are not generally available. These are the studies which have preceded the organization or reorganization of vocational education by school districts, larger areas within states, and states. For example, comprehensive state surveys were made in at least 30 states, most of them contributing to changed state policies relating to organization, administration, finance, personnel, and facilities for vocational education. Many of the state surveys dealt with the organization of area schools to provide vocational and technical education: junior and community colleges, vocational schools, technical institutes, branches of universities, and high schools serving students from a number of local districts. Many other studies were made in areas within states that were planning or replanning schools of these types. In addition, there were a number of significant local studies. About 33 doctoral theses were completed on subjects related to this chapter, and 17 of them dealt with problems of organization and administration.

Purpose: The growing public interest in vocational education and training (VET), most recently since the economic crisis of 2007/2008, has led to an exponential increase in articles with a vocational focus, underscoring the need for review studies for the purposes of systematic knowledge aggregation, clarification and interpretation. We assume that review studies follow the same minimum standards as other research methods: The review must be at least reproducible and thus the results verifiable or falsifiable. So far, however, the review methods used in VET research have not been investigated. Our purpose is to review the review procedures and methods used in published reviews of VET research to identify their current methodological quality. Approach: To classify the review studies, we initially developed a conceptual framework to distinguish different types of reviews. We then developed a methodological framework to assess the review methods used. Overall, to accelerate the review process, our review of reviews (or umbrella review) followed the rapid review approach: we limited our search to reviews in English published between 2014 and 2019 in peer-reviewed journals with a sub-stantial VET focus and indexed in Scopus and/or Web of Science. Therefore, we did not examine all existing reviews in the field of VET research. Rather, our specific focus was on a core sector of scientific research: peer-reviewed articles in curated databases. Furthermore, we concentrated on the review procedures and methods used, not on the content of the reviews. Findings: We identified nine journals with a substantial VET focus, yielding a total of 1,283 published articles between 2014 and 2019, of which only 19 articles (1.48%) were literature reviews. Of these 19 reviews, six were excluded from our umbrella review because of unclear methodological procedures. Based on the review typology we developed, five of the remaining 13 reviews were conceptual in nature, four were scoping reviews, three were evidence-oriented, and one was critical in nature. None of the reviews examined focused on meta-syntheses, research methods or meta-analyses. In total, this resulted in current review gaps with respect to theory generation (meta-synthesis), practice of theory elaboration and testing (methodological review) and the determination of overall effects across single studies (meta-analysis). Finally, our examination of the reviews showed that their scope was mostly clearly presented. However, with regard to the process steps ‘data selection’ and ‘data processing’, only a few reviews fully met the requirements of the methodological framework.Conclusion: Our review leads to four conclusions. 1) More systematic syntheses are needed because there is a substantial quantitative gap in review research. 2) In particular, there is a need for review studies with a focus on meta-synthesis, research methods and meta-analysis, as there is a current gap in these areas. 3) Reviews should be based on a review methodology with transparent and reproducible methods and verifiable or falsifiable results. The high number of subjective syntheses with unclear review procedures indicates that this mindset is not yet fully established in the field of VET research. 4) In the studies examined, there is a high degree of heterogeneity regarding to the accuracy and completeness of the methodological steps and data. The conceptual and methodological frameworks developed for the analysis can serve as guidelines for the conduct of reviews, and thus, the frameworks could contribute to the further development of the methodological basis of reviews.

Mixed methods had been heralded as the third methodological movement with several authorities from across an array of discipline fields contributing to a growing body of literature and theoretical developments. The discipline fields which are showing high levels of acceptance for mixed methods are those related to education, health and nursing, social and behavioural sciences and business/management disciplines. This third methodological movement is now beginning to address issues of quality in the reporting of mixed methods studies. The movement is beginning to question whether researchers utilising mixed methods have gone beyond the one dimensional and relatively rudimentary concept of triangulation to embrace the more complex designs and methodological theory being developed. The aim of the study is to explore the use and quality of mixed methods in vocational education research through a systematic review of a specific sample of vocational education and training (VET) based research. The paper concludes with a call for mixed methods in higher degree research training curricula and a need for established VET researchers to engage with the mixed methods foundational literature and the new and more complex theoretical developments that are emerging.

Describing various demographic characteristics of disadvantaged students, the programs they study and their employment outcomes is a significant area of research interest in the vocational education and training (VET) sector. This article offers a preliminary exploration of how groups are problematised and the consequent influence on VET research into disadvantage in Australia. Creating categories provides the historical and political contexts that allow specific practices and descriptors to become dominant. The major methodological approach used is a post-structuralist discourse analysis of policy documents, government VET reviews and published research into equity groups. It is argued that rather than envisaging VET research into disadvantage as a repetitious recounting of these groups’ lack of access to vocational education and training, other important agendas are being served by the continued inquiries into people that experience inequity. The influence of long-standing Australian discourses that valorise, mostly male, individual responsibility to be a self-regulating citizen who maintains ongoing employment ensures that policymakers require updated productive expert research into the population to support the specialist discourses of disadvantage.

Young men and women dominate different niches of science education in Australia, but how this divide varies between university and post-secondary vocational education and training (VET) is not well understood. Therefore, I compare courses in both sectors to assess if the male–female gap at later stages of education mirrors adolescent career plans and subject choices made in secondary school. Multinomial logistic regressions estimated on data from the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth (Y06) illustrate the extent to which the gender divides in secondary and post-secondary education correspond with one another. Y06 started with the 2006 Australian Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Each year until 2013, a nationally representative sample of youth, who were nearly 16 years old in 2006, reported their schooling and work experiences. I find that Australian women rarely specialise in physics, engineering and technology (PET); in contrast, they dominate the life sciences. While post-secondary science is segregated by gender everywhere, the disparity within VET is much deeper due to a large share of PET enrolments. VET students, who come from modest socio-economic backgrounds and have less academic success at school, learn in more segregated environments than their university peers. This analysis suggests that gender divides will be particularly hard to close within post-secondary VET, even if schools succeed in eradicating gender differentials in students’ career aspirations, science performance, self-concept and choices of science subjects.

Context: The importance of the involved stakeholders and their networks in vocational education and training (VET) focussing on international transfer and cooperation is highlighted in various empirical studies. A systematic empirical survey of these by means of social network analysis, however, has hardly been applied to date. This article is concerned with the development of social capital in the course of network formation and its sustainability. The object of investigation is the funded European VET innovation project AI Pioneers within the Erasmus+ program of the European Union. The main objective of the project is to establish and expand an international network in the context of VET in order to support the exchange of expertise on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in education. Approach: To answer the research questions, the first step was to combine theoretical approaches from a social network perspective from psychology in relation to the analysis of interpersonal trust, sociology regarding the social capital approach and business administration by addressing the roles of actors in innovation processes. Among others, the social network perspective in this study is based on the work of Granovetter as well as Marsden and Campbell. For the data collection, a fully structured interview questionnaire and a semi-structured interview guideline were developed based on the theoretical framework of the study. In the second step, a multi-perspective egocentric network analysis was carried out: Data on a total of N = 10 egocentric networks were collected from the funded partners in the AI Pioneers project to gain an overall picture of the combined social capital and network structures. For the visualisation of the network data, the type of structured and standardised network maps was used. Findings: Regarding the establishment of social capital in the analysed innovation project AI Pioneers, it can be emphasised that a total of 74 relationships have been recorded in the 10 egocentric networks combined. In line with the project objectives, the education sector is addressed by the majority of the analysed relationships (n = 54), with (technical) vocational schools making up a substantial part of these. Focussing on the sustainability of the surveyed network structures: Most of the analysed relationships already existed before the project start and were consolidated during it (n = 57), while new ones were also established (n = 17). In addition, the continuous development of mutual trust and the need for equal cooperation is emphasised: A relatively high level of mutual trust can be recorded overall in the analysed egocentric networks (n = 55), while a low mutual trust is present in 19 relationships which is described due to e.g. asymmetrical power relations or a lack of commitment. The results show that the relationships analysed primarily contribute their resources in the form of expertise and their networking knowledge to the egocentric networks. Furthermore, a high level of interest and willingness to support the AI Pioneers project can be captured, particularly due to the novelty of the topic and the application of AI in VET. Conclusions: The study makes a significant contribution to VET research and its methodological set by using social network analysis with a combination of qualitative approaches for analysing egocentric networks from multiple perspectives. The importance of allocating resources to the creation of social capital regarding cooperation, network building and the sustainable maintenance of established structures can be emphasised. In this respect the benefits of a network-based approach can be highlighted in the context of the Erasmus+ program and the partnerships for innovation on forward-looking topics. In addition, the development of the two structured survey instruments in this study can be emphasised, which can be further developed on the basis of future research. Further quantitative network analyses would be valuable for VET research, especially against the background of innovation drivers and network formation, such as market and trend-related drivers due to demands and developments in the field of AI in education.

This article explores the influence of institutional landscapes on vocational education and training (VET) organisations, leveraging the insights provided by neo-institutional theory on the relationships between internal and external sources for legitimacy and adaptation. The article explains key theoretical concepts from neo-institutional theory such as institutional myths, isomorphism, decoupling, agency, and the definitions of rational and irrational actors, demonstrating their relevance and applicability in contemporary VET research. The author argues that neo-institutional theory offers a framework to investigate the organisational and institutional dynamics shaping VET and opens for analysis, moving beyond current assumptions of formal structure and rationality. By showcasing diverse studies employing neo-institutional concepts, the article highlights the theory’s utility at the individual, organisational, and policy levels. The discussion underscores the importance of grounding VET research in theoretical exploration rather than normative or prescriptive definitions of an ideal state, encouraging a nuanced understanding of VET organisations’ interactions with their environments. The framework supports researchers in extending their analytical scope beyond immediate institutional contexts.

ObjectivesMissing data is a common problem during the development, evaluation, and implementation of prediction models. Although machine learning (ML) methods are often said to be capable of circumventing missing data, it is unclear how these methods are used in medical research. We aim to find out if and how well prediction model studies using machine learning report on their handling of missing data. Study design and settingWe systematically searched the literature on published papers between 2018 and 2019 about primary studies developing and/or validating clinical prediction models using any supervised ML methodology across medical fields. From the retrieved studies information about the amount and nature (e.g. missing completely at random, potential reasons for missingness) of missing data and the way they were handled were extracted. ResultsWe identified 152 machine learning-based clinical prediction model studies. A substantial amount of these 152 papers did not report anything on missing data (n = 56/152). A majority (n = 96/152) reported details on the handling of missing data (e.g., methods used), though many of these (n = 46/96) did not report the amount of the missingness in the data. In these 96 papers the authors only sometimes reported possible reasons for missingness (n = 7/96) and information about missing data mechanisms (n = 8/96). The most common approach for handling missing data was deletion (n = 65/96), mostly via complete-case analysis (CCA) (n = 43/96). Very few studies used multiple imputation (n = 8/96) or built-in mechanisms such as surrogate splits (n = 7/96) that directly address missing data during the development, validation, or implementation of the prediction model. ConclusionThough missing values are highly common in any type of medical research and certainly in the research based on routine healthcare data, a majority of the prediction model studies using machine learning does not report sufficient information on the presence and handling of missing data. Strategies in which patient data are simply omitted are unfortunately the most often used methods, even though it is generally advised against and well known that it likely causes bias and loss of analytical power in prediction model development and in the predictive accuracy estimates. Prediction model researchers should be much more aware of alternative methodologies to address missing data.

This study aims to analyze papers related to women's vocational competency development education published in domestic academic journals over the past 20 years from 2003 to 2023 to explore research trends and derive implications for women's human resource development. To this end, content analysis was conducted on 86 studies on women's vocational competency development education using the year of publication, journal, research subject, research topic, and research method as the framework for analysis. The results of the analysis showed that women's vocational competency development education research has been continuously increasing and has been published in various academic journals. The most common research subjects were studies on career status such as job seekers, employees, and career interruptions, and in particular, studies on women with career interruptions were overwhelmingly numerous. The most common research topic was vocational education and training, and most studies focused on educational effects such as specific targets or employment outcomes within the female group. The research field was mainly conducted in education, and quantitative research was mainly utilized. The implications of the research results include the need for research on women's job competency development education that reflects the changes and diversity of the female group, an approach to job competency development education from a lifelong education perspective, and strengthening the development of education programs related to promising occupations and future jobs for women. In addition, the follow-up research suggests the need for expansion of practical research such as program model development, and research on the impact of career development paradigm changes on women's job competency development education and performance evaluation.

Purpose To investigate how VET teachers in post-compulsory education integrate digital technologies into teaching, collaboration and assessment and to identify strategies for addressing digital competence gaps using the DigCompEdu/SELFIE for TEACHERS framework. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative case study in a Spanish Vocational Education and Training (VET) centre. An online open-ended questionnaire collected accounts from 25 teachers representing five professional families. Grounded-theory coding in ATLAS.ti generated 105 initial codes (meaning units), which were then mapped to the DigCompEdu areas to identify themes and actionable areas for improvement. Findings Teachers report a solid baseline of integration centred on the learning management systems, collaborative platforms and sector-specific software aligned with occupational standards. Assessment routines exist, but self- and peer-assessment are inconsistent without explicit scaffolding. VR/AI attract strong interest yet remain marginal in practice. Mapping to DigCompEdu shows strengths in Areas 1–3 and clear needs in Areas 4 and 6. Research limitations/implications This single-centre study, grounded in teachers’ detailed accounts, offers in-depth insight rarely captured in VET research, enhancing transferability and providing a solid foundation for future multi-site and mixed-methods studies. Practical implications Professional development aligned with DigCompEdu; stronger assessment literacy; investment in simulated/VR spaces and industry–centre partnerships for tool access and mentoring. Social implications Strengthening teachers’ digital competence supports equitable access to future-relevant skills, enhancing employability and mobility through digital and green transitions. Originality/value The study provides evidence grounded in teachers’ practice in post-compulsory VET, applying DigCompEdu in classroom settings and linking the results to policy and leadership actions. In doing so, it contributes to the Special Issue’s aim of foregrounding rigorous VET research and challenges its under-representation by placing teachers’ voices at the centre.

Historically plagued by concerns about the quality of the curriculum, instruction, vocational education teachers, and responsiveness to the needs of the workplace, the United States vocational education system has long suffered from negative perceptions among students, parents, school personnel, policymakers, and business and industry representatives. However, in the years since the publication of The Unfinished Agenda (National Commission on Secondary Vocational Education. The unfinished agenda: the role of vocational education in the high school. National Center for Research in Vocational Education, Columbus, 1984), a highly critical report authored by The National Commission on Secondary Vocational Education, the U.S. vocational education system has undergone many changes and reforms. Many of these changes have focused on the vocational education curriculum and have been directed at ensuring a supply of skilled labour to address the skills gap that exits between the abilities of workers and the needs of the workplace. Other changes have increased linkages to post-high school training to meet the needs for a more educated workforce. Additional efforts have focused on increasing school-business/industry collaboration, improving teacher quality and marketing the value of vocational education. Challenges still remain, including funding for vocational education, providing career awareness and guidance for students as they progress through school, and educating an increasingly diverse high school student population.

Making it real: The benefits of workplace learning in upper-secondary vocational education and training courses

This paper contributes to the literature by separately analysing the course enrolment and completion effects of vocational education and training (VET) as well as higher education. Moreover, we investigate the persistence of these wage effects over time while controlling for two potential selection biases. We take advantage of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth, which contains comprehensive information about completed and uncompleted courses and subsequent labour market outcomes. We find evidence of positive enrolment and completion effects for VET and university courses with important differences by type of course.

Not all colleges and universities for elite education mode; Employment employment dilemma, have prompted us to thinking about the classification of Education; Set up a complete modern vocational education system, come up with a modern occupation education system standards and evaluation methods, given the policy inclination, lead level in vocational colleges, the existing three colleges and universities and a considerable part of two colleges and universities to occupation colleges; For the specialized subject of ordinary universities and colleges of undergraduate course to higher vocational training, college students to actively implement the "2+1" training mode, the implementation of "3+1" training mode of undergraduates.

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