Date of Conferral

2020

Degree

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

School

Education

Advisor

Kelly Hall

Abstract

Transportation security threats are constantly changing. Training transportation security personnel to identify these changing threats is vital to the safety of travelers aboard transportation vessels. Although many studies about detection competency and training of screeners at airports have been conducted, a gap in the research literature exists about training security practice in the cruise ship industry. Currently, not all cruise companies require their security employees to use screening tutoring software as part of their onboard training. In an orientation program, a maritime corporation implemented online screening simulation tutoring to train and an assessment tool to measure the detection competency of newly hired security personnel. Guided by Green and Swets signal detection theory, the purpose of this study was to determine if there was a statistically significant difference in the posttraining threat detection competency between security personnel who used the screening tutoring software and those who did not, controlling for pretraining competency. A quantitative comparative research design using archival data was conducted. The difference in posttraining detection competency of a census of 89 trainees, 49 who used and 40 who did not use the simulation, was tested using one-way ANCOVA. Findings indicated that, after controlling for pretraining competency, security personnel who used the screening tutoring software had significantly higher posttraining threat detection competency than personnel who did not use the simulation tutoring software (p < .05). Training maritime security personnel to have higher threat detection competency has the potential to create increased security aboard cruise vessels thus promoting positive social change within the maritime industry and community over time.

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