Organisations should prioritize and promote employees’ work engagement if they are to effectively realise their goals and objectives. This study seeks to examine the influence of gender on employees’ levels of work engagement within a South African university. A quantitative non-experimental cross-sectional survey design was used to collect data from 154 university employees who were purposefully selected to participate in this study. Data were analysed using SPSS software (version 23.0) and the findings show no statistically significant gender differences amongst employees with regard to their levels of work engagement. The findings provide scope for further research in South Africa which should examine ethnic and cultural connotations related to gender and further investigate how these influence employees’ work engagement.

Orientation: Measurement invariance is one of the most precarious aspects of the scale development process without which the interpretation of research findings on population subgroups may be ambiguous and even invalid. Besides tests for validity and reliability, measurement invariance represents the hallmark for psychometric compliance of a new measuring instrument and provides the basis for inference of research findings across a range of relevant population sub-groups.Research purpose: This study tested the measurement invariance of a Learning Programme Management and Evaluation (LPME) scale across levels of academic achievement.Motivation for the study: It is important for any researcher involved in new scale development to ensure that the measurement instrument and its underlying constructs have proper structural alignment and that they both have the same level of meaning and significance across comparable heterogeneous groups.Research design, approach and method: A quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional survey design was used, and data were obtained from 369 participants who were selected from three public sector organisations using a probabilistic simple random sampling technique. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences and Analysis of Moment Structures software (versions 21.0.0) were used to analyse the data.Main findings: The findings show that all the four invariance models tested have achieved acceptable goodness-of-fit indices. Furthermore, the findings show that the factorial structure of the LPME scale and the meaning of its underlying constructs are invariant across different levels of academic achievement for human resource development (HRD) practitioners and learners or apprentices involved in occupational learning programmes.Practical implications: The findings of this study suggest practical implications for HRD scholars as they are enabled to make informed decisional balance comparisons involving educational attainment sub-groups.Contributions and value addition: This study contributes methodologically to the sub-field of HRD by enabling scholars to make comparisons of mean differences or other structural parameters across sub-groups.

There is no sufficient research that was conducted on the participation of women in the Ottoman Economic system. Most of the time, women in Ottoman State was described considering the framework of harem. However, truth is very different. When the Ottoman records are analyzed, the great economic contribution of Ottoman women to the family and social life has been seen. Of course during the classical period of the Ottoman empire, the given roles to the women is much more limited than the given roles to the men in the social , economic and politic fields. However in the Ottoman social life, the contribution of women to the family budget, the roles in the working life were so important which were thought. The women in Ottoman period have a significant role in the agricultural sector. When the archive documents checked, it has been countered that the women in Ottoman state were involved in agriculture and animal husbandry, gave the direction to the society during the war and peace, worked in the textile industry, home economics. and they had the right of heritage. But it has been that women in England participated in economic activities after the revolution of industry. Women in the West worked in the textile and production sectors in the beginning of the 19th century. But the women in Ottoman state started to work in the fields of industry and service after the Tanzimat. Furthermore, some examples show that women in Anatolia were dealing trade and running stores. For example, in the 17th century, most of the tread production factories in Bursa were owned by women. and the women workers were Muslim and non-Muslim. There were women who had grinder and bakery in their house beside the women who dealt with textile. In this study, it is aimed that to show the role of Ottoman women in the social life and investigated the subjects of women's having properties, the rights of heritage, trading and participating in production by using Prime Ministry Ottoman Archive Documents. ÖZETOsmanlı ekonomisinde kadının rolü ve çalışma hayatına katılmasına yönelik yapılan araştırmalar yeterli düzeyde değildir. Genellikle Osmanlı kadını harem çerçevesinden bakılarak tanımlanmaktadır. Ancak, Osmanlı arşiv vesikaları incelendiğinde, gerçeklerin çok farklı olduğu, Osmanlı kadınının aile ve toplum hayatına önemli ölçüde ekonomik katkılar sağladığı görülmektedir. Elbette, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nun klasik döneminde toplumsal, ekonomik ve politik yaşam alanlarında kadınlara tanınan rol erkeklere oranla daha sınırlıdır. Ancak, Osmanlı toplumsal yaşamında kadınların aile ekonomisine katkıları, çalışma yaşamındaki etki ve rolleri sanılandan çok daha fazla olmuştur. Kadın, Osmanlı'da hâkim sektör olan tarımda ağırlıklı bir role sahiptir. Osmanlı'da kadının tarım ve hayvancılıkla uğraştığı, savaşta ve barışta ekonomiye yön verdiği; ev endüstrisinde tekstil üreticiliği, ipekböcekçiliği ve dokumacılık ile uğraştığı; miras alma ve miras bırakma haklarına sahip olduğu belgelerle tespit edilebilmektedir. Örneğin İngiltere'de kadınların ilk kez sa...

This study assesses the psychometric properties of the Stakeholders Inputs (SI) scale which is designed for the South African occupational learning context. A quantitative, non-experimental cross-sectional survey design was used and data were collected from a sample of 652 respondents. Data were analysed using SPSS and Winsteps software. The findings reveal that the SI scale is a psychometrically robust instrument suitable for application in the South African occupational learning context. The measure shows a good person and item separation indices and no evidence of item misfit. All items contribute to a single trait measurement.

A thorough examination of psychometric properties of measurement scales is necessary to ensure that these scales comply with the existing scientific conventions. This article assesses the psychometric properties of the Learning Programme Management and Evaluation (LPME) scale. A quantitative, non-experimental cross-sectional survey design was used. Data were collected from a sample of 652 respondents comprising skills development practitioners and learners/apprentices. Data were analyzed using Winsteps, SPSS and AMOS computer software. The findings show that the LPME scale meets the psychometric expectations and complies with the established scientific conventions in terms of validity, reliability, fit and unidimensionality.