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Apprenticeships in the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, which operate under the United Services Military Apprenticeship Program (USMAP), now account for about 20 percent of all registered apprentices in the USA. The purpose of this paper is to draw on interviews and focus groups to examine the strengths and limitations of USMAP, develops implications of the study for policy, and presents ideas for demonstration projects to learn how best to improve USMAP.

The primary method involved background research on USMAP and USMAP occupations, interviews with key staff members involved with USMAP operations, and 11 focus groups at two Navy and two Marine Corps bases with USMAP apprentices, USMAP completers, and USMAP supervisors.

The study contributes by answering key questions about USMAP. Positives include the potential to upgrade skills, document occupational competencies, and smooth the transition to civilian employment. The study shows that service members have a weak understanding of the rationale for participating and for completing their apprenticeships. Logistical problems often result in incomplete documentation. Counselors lack knowledge about how to make USMAP completers attractive to employers. Finally, USMAP does little to engage employers in insuring the occupational standards are adequate for civilian jobs and in hiring those completing apprenticeships. The study draws policy implications and presents an agenda for research.

The military should provide additional financial support to help the program connect participants with civilian jobs, including a website where employers could search for candidates and communicate with veterans.

This study is the first to examine the operations and implementation of the USMAP.

In higher education, interdisciplinarity involves the design of subjects that offer the opportunity to experience ‘different ways of knowing’ from students’ core or preferred disciplines. Such an education is increasingly important in a global knowledge economy. Many universities have begun to introduce interdisciplinary studies or subjects to meet this perceived need. This chapter explores some of the issues inherent in moves towards interdisciplinary higher education. Definitional issues associated with the term ‘academic discipline’, as well as other terms, including ‘multidisciplinary’, ‘cross-disciplinary’, ‘pluridisciplinarity’, ‘transdisciplinarity’ and ‘interdisciplinary’ are examined. A new nomenclature is introduced to assist in clarifying the subtle distinctions between the various positions. The chapter also outlines some of the pedagogical and epistemological considerations which are involved in any move from a conventional form of educational delivery to an interdisciplinary higher education, and recommends caution in any implementation of an interdisciplinary curriculum.

This chapter provides a contemporary view of state-of-the science research and thinking done in the areas of selection and classification. It takes as a starting point the observation that the world of work is undergoing important changes that are likely to result in different occupational and organizational structures. In this context, we review recent research on criteria, especially models of job performance, followed by sections on predictors, including ability, personality, vocational interests, biodata, and situational judgment tests. The paper also discusses person-organization fit models, as alternatives or complements to the traditional person-job fit paradigm.

This study aims to explore the impact of spatial configuration on behavioral patterns of visitors in the ground floor of health-care spaces.

In this study, the Space Syntax analysis was used to combine visibility graph analysis and axial line analysis with empirical observation of visitors’ activities. Two types of observation methods on visitors were conducted to discover the behavioral patterns of individuals, respectively, named “gate counts” and “people following.”

The outcomes of this research revealed that the spatial arrangements of pathways, public areas, vertical circulations, entrance space, lobby, emergency department, reception desk and pharmacy have a significant influence on the way that visitors perceive the health-care environment.

The current research is limited to two aspects of effective wayfinding (configuration of health care and geometry). Future work can investigate the other potential factors coupled with the current factor as an integrated research for enhancing wayfinding and sustaining accessibility. Another limitation is that the observation results for this study had been conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic and future studies can compare these results with the current COVID-19 situation within health care environments.

A large amount of research has focused on the needs of populations in developed countries. This topic has not been investigated thoroughly by professionals in developing countries such as Iran. Accordingly, this study benefits environmental psychologists and architects by revealing the effective characteristics of legible spaces in health-care environments.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the financial well-being (FWB) of Malaysian households and to construct a subjective FWB index with present and future time perspectives.

Data were collected from 1,867 respondents across five major regions in Malaysia. Adapting the InCharge Financial Distress/Financial Well-being (IFDFW) Scale by Prawitz et al. (2006) and the method of computing an index by Devlin (2009), this study develops an FWB index using subjective measures that include future time perspectives (retirement). The index was employed to measure the FWB across low-, middle- and high-income groups and socio-demographic characteristics.

This study finds evidence that Malaysians' FWB is at an average level (46.8). Middle-income households' FWB (46.1) flanks between the financial well-being index (FWBI) levels of the low-income (37.4) and high-income households (58.7). Across age groups, education levels and employment sectors, the FWB of Malaysians significantly varies, although not across different ethnics, religions, zones and residential areas. Overall, the results suggest that the detrimental effects of FWB are perceived by all Malaysian households nationwide regardless of their religion, ethnicity and residential areas.

The results of this study complement the other well-being indices used by policymakers and may serve as a useful input for government and policymakers for them to formulate appropriate strategies to promote higher FWB of Malaysian households based on their socio-demographic characteristics.

This study used primary data and developed a subjective FWB index that leverages on people's perceptions of their own financial well-being while including present and future time perspectives. The main contribution of this paper is to construct an index that is easily interpretable and that complements the existing FWB indices, and to identify the segments of society that have low vis-à-vis high FWB.