Studies in the fields of education and industrial and organizational psychology demonstrate that the sense of responsibility is positively related to motivation and engagement. The present study in the journal Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation. (GIO) therefore addresses the question to what extent trainers feel responsible in relation to different training outcomes. For this purpose, N = 393 trainers from the field of continuing vocational education and training were asked in an online survey to retrospectively assess both their personal responsibility and their externally assigned accountability in the context of a specific training program. First, an exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation revealed two factors for each of the two responsibility concepts, the sense of responsibility for short-term training results and the sense of responsibility for long-term training results. Mean comparisons showed, that with regard to long-term results personal responsibility was lower than the degree of externally assigned accountability (p < 0.001, d = 0.33). Furthermore, trainers did feel more responsible for short-term outcomes, such as trainee satisfaction or learning success than for long-term training outcomes, such as transfer or improved work performance of trainees (p < 0.001, d = 0.82), which is consistent with both theoretical considerations regarding the general accountability of trainers concerning the learning process and isolated empirical findings on trainers. Finally, with regard to training practice, approaches are discussed as how to strengthen the responsibility of trainers. © 2023, The Author(s).
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