Chapter 15

Using Tests in Organizational Settings

History• Walter Dill Scott (1915) “The Scientific Selection

of Salesmen” – proposed that employers use group tests for personnel selection.

• Scott’s influence led to Army Alpha & Beta testing during WW I. Those were discontinued following WWI.

• Employment testing, however, continued when Millicent Pond (1927) studied the selection and placement of apprentice metal workers.

• Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory originated from this early work.

• The Psychological Corporation organized by J. McKeen Cattell began.

History (continued)

• WW II: Army General Classification Test (AGCT) developed by Bingham (chief psychologist of War Dept.).

• Multiple commercial applications have since been developed.

• 1964 Civil Rights Act stimulated interest in insuring that tests were valid and fair.

• 1978 – Uniform Guidelines for Employee Selection were developed.

Pre-employment Testing

The Employment Interview

Traditional – “getting to know you function.” …Biased by sex, age, race, and physical attractiveness.

-This bias has been attributed more to the interviewer than to the process.

Pre-employment Testing (cont.)The Employment Interview

Structured – standardized, allows scoring. Higher inter-rater reliability, internal consistency, and concurrent validity.– Focus on behavior – what you have done or can do

rather than how you feel about…

– Each candidate receives the same questions in the same order.

– The questions require a job analysis covering important job functions and duties (content validity); therefore job related.

– E.g, Human Resources Professional Job Interview

Performance Tests

• High-fidelity tests replicate the job setting as realistically as possible; e.g., flight simulator.– Assessment Centers – large scale replications of the job that

require candidates to solve typical job problems by role playing or demonstrating proficiency.

• Low-fidelity tests simulate the job task using a written, verbal, or visual description.– Video tests – candidates are shown typical job situations and

asked to choose his/her response from multiple choice format.

• Validity of performance tests in predicting job performance =.54

• Have high content validity, and are job related.

Tests for Specific Types of Jobs

E.g.,

Personality Inventories

• Examine traits found useful in predicting job success: conscientiousness, extraversion, emotional stability, etc.

E.g., The 16PF Questionnaire (developed by Raymond Cattell) gives a profile.

• Poor predictors of job success generally.

Five-factor Model of Personality(NEO Personality Inventory)

1. NEUROTICISM

2. EXTRAVERSION

3. OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE

4. AGREEABLENESS

5. CONSCIENTIOUSNESS

The Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI)

• Adjustment• Ambition• Sociability• Likeability• Prudence• Intellectance• School success(Validity key to detect careless or random

responding.)

The Hogan Personality Inventory Predictive Validity:

• Sociability predicts sales revenue (r=.51)

• Prudence predicts supervisors’ ratings of conscientiousness (r=.22)

• School Success predicts training performance (r=.34-.55)

Integrity TestingTwo categories:

– Physiological measures– Paper-and-pencil tests

• Physiological – polygraph tests - problem with false positives (mistakenly classifying innocent takers as guilty) and poor predictive validity.

• The Employee Polygraph Protection Act lf 1988 forbids the use of the polygraph as an employment test. Interestingly, employers providing security services and government agencies are exempt from this law!

• Paper-and-pencil integrity tests predict counterproductive behaviors (.29-.39).

• But highly susceptible to faking.

Legal Constraints

• 1978 Uniform Guidelines for Employee Selection catalog “best practices” to promote fairness and legal defensibility of employment practices. (Note: Congress did not pass the Guidelines and therefore they are not federal law.)

• Any process that is used to make a hiring decision is defined as a “test.” Includes application forms, reference checks, letters of reference and tests.

• All employment tests must be job-related and based on a job analysis.

• “Adverse impact” is the exclusion of a disproportionate number of persons belonging to a protected class based on race, gender, age, etc. In these cases, alternative methods for assessing job candidates must be found.

Performance Impairment Tests• An alternative to chemical analysis for the presence of

drugs.• Can use a simulation to detect impairment in motor

skills or hand-eye coordination (similar to a video game).

• Compare to the individual’s baseline.• Can be done quickly and easily in the workplace as

opposed to taking the employee off the work site for drug testing.

Performance Appraisal• Ranking employees (best to worst)

– Forced distribution to get a normal curve, using categories such as “outstanding,” “above average,” etc. – prevents the ranker from assigning all people to one category.

• Rating employees– graphic rating scale- each of the scales represents a

dimension, such as quality or quantity of work. Guided by anchors.

– Behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS) use on-the-job behaviors as anchors for the rating scale.

– Behavioral checklist - rating frequency of important behaviors.

Performance Appraisal• Rating Errors

– Leniency errors – giving all employees better ratings than they deserve.

– Severity errors – giving all employees worse ratings than they deserve.

– Central-tendency errors – using only the middle of the rating scale and ignoring highest and lowest scale categories.

– Halo effect – when raters let their judgment on one dimension influence judgments on other dimensions (ie.,giving low rating on quality and quantity of work when employee met standards for quantity of work)

• 3600 feedback: ratings from supervisors, peers, subordinates, or customers.