191 trainees from14 courses of initial qualification undertook a training module on health and occupational safety. The article reports statistical analyses of trainee expectations and perceptions of the module. The most common expectations were found to be realistic and little influenced by gender, age or level of education.
However, cluster analysis revealed four groups of initial training courses which differed in terms of trainee expectations. Factor analysis of evaluations of 20 aspects of the module showed that trainees perceived and evaluated it in terms of six dimensions; the adequacy of the formador, the adequacy of teaching, the structure of
the module, its value, the support offered to participants and the adequacy of the organization of the module. Perceptions were significantly influenced by gender, age, level of education and type of initial training course. Both ordinal (PLUM) and conventional regression analyses showed that an overall evaluation of the module, made by means of a single rating scale, was significantly influenced only by perceptions of its structure and instrumental value. It is concluded that statistical analyses of trainee expectations and perceptions can provide useful feedback to organisers of training courses.

keywords: training evaluation, health and occupational safety, evaluation of expectations, evaluation of perceptions ,multivariate statistics.