Chapter 18: Testing in Industrial & Business Setting PDF

P S Y C H A S S E S S M E N T Chapter 18: Testing in Industrial and Business Setting B A L B I N O / C A R A I G / T I B O R / U B A G Employment Interview It helps people make selection and promotion decisio...

P S Y C H A S S E S S M E N T Chapter 18: Testing in Industrial and Business Setting B A L B I N O / C A R A I G / T I B O R / U B A G Employment Interview It helps people make selection and promotion decisions in business and industry. It is complicated because the applicant and the employer are motivated to slant their presentation in order to make an impression, not necessarily to be completely honest. Most research supports a structured format for the employment interview because it enables interviewers to reach agreement on their employment decisions. It often involves a search for negative or unfavorable rather than favorable evidence about a person.  Base Rates and Hit Rates HIT RATES BASE RATES The percentage of cases in which a test A test does not need a good hit rate, because the accurately predicts success or failure. rate of predicting success on the job is high without the test Example: Hits occur in 2 situations: Admission officers might predict who will do well (1) the test predicts that the person will be in law school on the basis of information other unacceptable and he or than scores on the LSAT. They might use college she does fail grades. Success on the criterion in this case might (2) the test indicates that the person is be passing the bar examination on the first acceptable and he or she attempt. The pass rate without using the LSAT does succeed would be called the base rate.  Suppose the LSAT has a hit rate of 76% for predicting who will pass the Example: bar examination in a certain state. However, 85% of the people who take the test for the first time in that state pass. The LSAT in this case tells us less than we would have known without it. False Negatives: In a psychological application, concluding that someone is not suicidal because he or she is below the cutoff score when, in fact, he or she is suicidal may allow a preventable suicide. False Positives: Someone is selected for a job on the basis of a test. Once on the job, the person does poorly and gets fired. High costs sometimes accompany this type of error. For instance, time and money might be invested to train a person who cannot really do the job. In addition, job failure can hurt the person’s self-esteem and self-confidence. If the costs of a false positive are high, then you may want to raise the cutting score.  Taylor - Russell Tables Developed in 1939 by Taylor and Russell A method for evaluating the validity of a test in relation to the amount of information it contributes beyond the base rates. Definition of Success For each situation in which the test is to be used, success on the outcome must be defined. Example: First-year grade point averages above 2.3 might be defined as success in college, and those below 2.3 might be defined as failures. Or salespeople who achieve average monthly sales of more than $20,000 might be deemed successful, and those who sell less than $20,000 might be thought of as unsuccessful. Determination of Base Rate The percentage of people who would succeed if there were no testing or screening procedure must be determined. Definition of Selection Ratio The selection ratio must be defined. This is the percentage of applicants who are selected or admitted. Determination of Validity Coefficient A validity coefficient for the test, usually the correlation of the test with the criterion, is required. Example: Incremental Validity Suppose that you are put in charge of deciding Does the test who will be admitted to a program to train give you more information than you could find secondary-education teachers. The first thing you if it were not used? If so, how much more must do is decide on a definition of success. After information does it give? meeting with a committee, you may decide that success will be defined as completing the program It is the unique information gained through using and obtaining a satisfactory performance the test. evaluation in student teaching. The important form of evidence for incremental validity is the determination of how much By studying records, you determine that when no information a test contributes beyond some selection procedure was used, 60% of the simpler method for making the same prediction. applicants to the program succeeded on this task. Thus, the base rate would be 60%, and the Taylor- Russell table for a base rate of.60 would be used. Example: A researcher develops a new You then consider using the Graduate Record personality test (e.g., a test to measure emotional Examination (GRE) to select people for your intelligence) and wants to assess its incremental program because you can accept only 70% of the validity in predicting job performance, over and applicants. A study is done and determines that above traditional personality tests (e.g., the Big the correlation between GRE scores and success Five personality traits). If the emotional (completing the program and obtaining a intelligence test provides additional predictive satisfactory evaluation in student teaching) is.30. power beyond what is accounted for by the Big This is the validity of the test for predicting the Five, it demonstrates incremental validity. criterion. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Developed by I. B. Myers and K. C. Briggs, is a theoretically constructed test based on Carl Jung’s theory of psychology types. Jung theorized that there are four main ways in which we experience or come to know the world: a. Sensing - knowing through sight, hearing, touch, and so on b. Intuition - inferring what underlies sensory inputs c. Feeling - focusing on the emotional aspect of experience d. Thinking - reasoning or thinking abstractly The purpose of MBTI is to determine where people fall on the introversion–extroversion dimension and on which of the four modes they most rely Tests for Use in Industry: Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT) It is a quick (12-minute) test of mental ability in adults It is a quick and stable paper-and-pencil intelligence test with extensive norms. Widely used for employee-related decisions in industry, it has its greatest value when local validity data are available The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT)  Classifying Environments Some of the earliest work in the field of environmental psychology involved building elaborate systems to classify the characteristics of environments that had been shown to affect individual or group behavior (Holahan, 1986). Example: The likelihood that a high-school girl will begin to smoke, for example, can be greatly influenced by how many girls she knows who already smoke or who approve of smoking. Moos’s work on measuring the characteristics of environments demonstrates the ways in which personal characteristics of the work environment affect job choice and worker satisfaction Example: Workers are more satisfied with work environments that promote quality interactions between workers and supervisors than they are with environments that keep these relationships more distant.  Job Analysis Used to describe and measure characteristics of the job. Employers often want to detail the activities of their workplace to determine what type of personnel is needed or why some employees are unhappy working in the setting. 5 Basic Methods of Job Analysis Checklists Used by job analysts to describe the activities and working conditions usually associated with a job title. Example:  5 Basic Methods of Job Analysis Critical Incidents Are observable behaviors that differentiate successful from unsuccessful employees. The critical-incident method was developed by J. C. Flanagan (1954). Example: A critical incident that might describe a successful employee is “always arrives at meetings on time.” A critical incident that describes an unsuccessful employee might be “leaves work area disorganized.” Observation Another method for learning about the nature of the job. Information gathered through observational methods can sometimes be biased because people change their behavior when they know they are being watched. To avoid this problem, the participant-observation method is sometimes used. A participant-observer is someone who participates in the job and functions as though he or she were one of the workers. 5 Basic Methods of Job Analysis Interviews Can also be used to find out about a job. Workers may give an interviewer information that differs from what they would give another employee because they are uncomfortable or fear that what they say will be held against them. Another problem is that an interviewer unfamiliar with the job may not ask the right questions. Questionnaires Commonly used to find out about job situations, but their use calls for special precautions. Many employers favor questionnaires because they are inexpensive. The employer may never know whether the respondent understood the questions. The type of information gained is limited to the specific questions. Selective return rate in questionnaire studies Measuring the Person–Situation Interaction To a growing number of psychologists, whether traits or situations are more important in determining behavior is a “pseudoquestion” It is meaningless to ask whether traits or situations are more important in explaining behavior, because behavior is clearly a joint function of both, or person–situation interaction Example: Established leaders change their behavior to fit different situations. Analysis of Variance It is used to separate the proportion of variance attributable to each of these factors. Error of Variance The proportion of the total not explained by the three sources of influence. The largest pie in Figure 18.5 Template-Matching Technique Introduced by Bem and Funder (1978) to help predict more of the people more of the time. A system that takes advantage of people’s ability to predict their own behavior in particular situations. The system attempts to match personality to a specific template of behavior. Example: Consider how to answer the question “Should Tom become an insurance salesperson?” Assuming you know nothing about Tom, perhaps the best way to guide him would be to describe how several hypothetical people might react to working in this job. Bem and Funder proposed that “situations be characterized as sets of template-behavior pairs, each template being a personality description of an idealized type of person expected to behave in a specified way in that setting” The probability that a particular person will behave in a particular way in a situation is a function of the match between his or her characteristics and a template. Example: If Tom’s personality characteristics matched the template for those who hated being insurance salespeople, then he might be best advised to avoid that career. Thank you! Group 4: 1. Balbino, JC Fhamela 2. Caraig, Hazel 3. Tibor, Jewil Meigh - Group Leader 4. Ubag, Desiree Shynne