Describe the two types of barriers to training evaluation and provide examples of each type of barrier.

Barriers to training evaluation fall into two categories: pragmatic and political. In terms of pragmatic barriers, training departments need to demonstrate their usefulness and their contribution to job performance improvements and ultimately to the company's bottom line. Training evaluation requires knowledge of evaluation models, research design, measurement, questionnaire construction, and data analysis. For some, that can seem an intimidating prospect. Data gathering and analytical efforts require time and effort from the trainees, their supervisors, and so on. Evaluation also costs money. Siphoning budgets from this main task to the evaluation of training programs may prove unpalatable. With respect to political barriers, some trainers do not evaluate training programs on ethical grounds and because of a perceived or actual conflict of interest. Evaluation can be threatening as it may reveal that part of a training program-or even an entire training approach-is ineffective. While this can be a valuable finding, some trainers fear that this will reflect poorly on them and the training function. Training is an investment and, as with all investments, it is important to ascertain if it is a good or poor one. Evaluation data can indicate it is a poor one and this is a threat to the trainer and the training function.