Testing in Industrial and Business Settings

Testing in Industrial and Business Settings

• Employment Interviews are used for selection and promotion decisions in business.
• Interview complexity arises because both employer and applicant may slant their presentation to create a good impression, not necessarily complete honesty.
• Research suggests structured interviews improve agreement on employment decisions.
• Interviews often focus on unfavorable aspects of the candidate rather than favorable ones.

Base Rates and Hit Rates

• Hit rates are the percentage of cases where a test accurately predicts success or failure.
• Hits occur when a test correctly predicts an unacceptable candidate who fails and an acceptable candidate who succeeds.
• Base rates are prediction success rates without testing.
• Tests don't need high hit rates if the base rate (without testing) for success is already high.

False Positives and False Negatives

• False negatives occur when a test incorrectly concludes a candidate is not suicidal, when they are.
• False positives occur when a test incorrectly indicates a candidate's suitability for a job and they later perform poorly and are fired, incurring high costs (time, training, etc.).
• High false positive costs may necessitate higher test cut-off scores.

Taylor-Russell Tables

• Taylor-Russell Tables assess test validity in relation to pre-existing success rates (base rate).
• Defining success is crucial—a clear definition of successful performance determines the outcome variable for the test.
• Base rate is calculated as % people who succeed without testing.
• Selection ratio refers to the percentage of applicants who are selected.
• Validity coefficient (correlation between test and criterion result) must be determined.

Incremental Validity

• Incremental validity checks if a test provides information beyond existing information to predict outcomes.
• Assessing incremental validity means determining unique info a test offers over simpler, established methods.
• A good example of this would be in predicting work performance through an emotional intelligence test above and beyond standard personality tests.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

• MBTI is a personality test based on Jung's work.
• It categorizes people based on how they perceive the world and make decisions, classifying people into four dimensions.
• The four dimensions are Extraversion-Introversion, Sensing-Intuition, Thinking-Feeling, and Judging-Perceiving.

Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT)

• A quick, 12-minute test of mental ability.
• Widely used in industry for evaluating applicants.
• Greatest value when local validity data are available.

Job Analysis: Methods

• Checklists used to describe job tasks and working conditions.
• Critical incidents involve observing crucial behaviors that distinguish successful vs. unsuccessful employees.
• Observation entails monitoring employee behaviors.
• Questionnaires collect structured information from employees about tasks and conditions.
• Interviews may uncover concerns, biases or conflicts, not revealed in other methods.

Measuring Person-Situation Interaction

• Traits and situations jointly influence behavior.
• Analysis of variance measures the variance portion attributable from each factor by considering person, situation and interaction.
• Some people behave differently based on situations they find themselves in.
• People's behaviour does not follow a strict pattern and should be observed in the context of their conditions

Template-Matching Technique

• Assesses the fit between an individual's characteristics and characteristics of a situation or role (such as insurance salesman)
• This approach anticipates, based on observable templates of behaviour in situations, how individuals will respond.