Basic Training for New Public Officials

Research

Research indicates that newly elected and appointed public officials seldom feel comfortable with their range or depth of knowledge about the requirements of their new positions. Moreover, it is not uncommon for new public officials to acquire important information (e.g., sunshine laws) via an embarrassing public revelation of a serious error.

Other organizations offer trainings for new public officials, but these are typically held only annually, are quite costly ($1500 or more), and frequently require public officials to travel outside of their regions for several days. To help avoid these difficulties, Extension professionals designed a brief course that covers some of the topics new public officials need to know that can be offered frequently, at a low cost, and in localized regions.

Twenty-four public officials attend one or more of a five-session series of classes that addressed ethics laws, government finance, public records and open meetings laws, zoning basics, and how to handle the media.

Two types of evaluations were conducted, a process evaluation that assessed participants' learning and an outcome evaluation that assessed participants' use of the information they acquired.

Process Evaluation: Retrospectives post-class questionnaires were mailed after each session to assess participants' mastery of the evening's learning objectives. With an approximate response rate of 50%, finding indicated that participants' knowledge about 39 out of 46 learning objectives improved statistically significantly.

Outcome Evaluation: Three months after completing the program, questionnaires were mailed to all participants. With a roughly 26% response rate, findings indicated that virtually all respondents reported making many improvements (6 or 7 on a 7-point scale) in their policies, rules, and/or procedures for all topics, that they had advised others about the things they had learned, and that their confidence about each topic was strongly improved.

Plans to continue and strengthen the program will be discussed.