Reliability, while indispensable only tells you that the test is measuring something consistently. It does not prove that you are measuring what you intend to measure. A mis-manufactured 33 inch yardstick will consistently tell you that 33 inch boards are 33 inches long. Unfortunately, if what you’re looking for is a board is one full yard long, then your 33 inch yardstick though reliable is misleading you by 3 inches.
What you need is a valid yardstick. Validity tells you whether the test (or yardstick) is measuring what you think it’s supposed to be measuring.
A test, as we said, is a sample of a person’s behavior but some tests are more clearly representative of the behavior being sampled than others. A typing test, for example, clearly corresponds to an on the job behavior. At the other extreme, there may be no apparent relationship between the items on the test and the behavior. This is the case with projective personality tests. Thus, in the Thematic perception test, the psychologists asks the person to explain how he or she interprets an ambiguous picture. The psychologists use that interpretation to draw conclusions about the person’s personality and behavior. In such tests, it is more difficult to prove that the tests are measuring what they are said to measure in this case some trait of the person’s personality that they have valid.
Test validity:
The accuracy with which a test, interview and so on measures what it purports to measure or fulfills the function it was designed to fill.
Test validity answers the question. Does this test measure what it’s supposed to measure? Put another way, validity refers to the correctness of the inferences that we can make based on the test. For example, if Jane gets higher score on a mechanical comprehension tests than Jim can we be sure that Jane possesses more mechanical comprehension than Jim? With employee selection tests, validity often refers to evidence that the test is job related – in other words, that performance on the test is a valid predictor of subsequent performance on the job. A selection test must be valid since, without proof of validity, there is no logical or legally permissible reason to continue using it to screen job applicants. You would not be too comfortable taking the GRE, if you didn’t think about your score. Equal employment law calls for use of valid tests. In employment testing, there are two main ways to demonstrate a test’s validity: criterion validity and content validity.
Criterion validity:
A type of validity based in showing that scores on the test (predictors) are related to job performance (criterion).
Demonstrating criterion validity means demonstrating that those who do well on the test also do well on the job, and that those who do poorly on the test poorly on the job. Thus, the test has validity to the extent that the people with higher test scores perform better on the job. In psychological measurement, a predictor is the measurement (in this case, the test score) that you are trying to relate to a criterion like performance on the job. The term criterion validity reflects that terminology.
Content validity:
A test that is content valid is one that contains a fair sample of the tasks and skills actually needed for the job in question.
Employers demonstrate the content validity of a test by showing that the test constitutes a fair sample of the content of the job. The basic procedure here is to identify job tasks that are critical to performance, and then randomly select a sample of those tasks to be tested. In selecting students for dental school, many schools give applicants chunks of chalk, and ask them to carve something that looks like a tooth. If the content you choose for the test is a representative sample of what the person needs to know for the job, then the test is probably content valid. Clumsy dental students need not apply.
Demonstrating content validity sounds easier than it is in practice. Demonstrating that (1) the tasks the person performs on the test are really a comprehensive and random sample of the tasks performed on the job and (2) the conditions under which the person takes the test resemble the work situation is not always easy. For many jobs, employers opt to demonstrate other evidence of a test’s validity – most often, criterion validity.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Importance of The Good Selection of People
Once you have a pool of applicants, the next step is to select the best candidates for the job. This usually means whittling down the applicant pool by using the screening tools explained later tests, assessments centers, and background and reference checks. Then the prospective supervisor can interview likely candidates and decide who to hire.
Selecting the right employees is important for three main reasons: performance, costs, and legal obligations.
Performance: First your own performance always depends in part on your subordinates. Employees with the right skills will do a better job for you and the company. Employees without these skills or who are abrasive or obstructionist won’t perform effectively and your own performance and the firm’s will suffer. The time to screen out undesirables is before they are in the door, not after.
Cost: Second, it is important because it’s costly to recruit and hire employees. Hiring and training even a clerk can cost $ 5,000 or more in fees and supervisory time. The total cost of hiring a manager could easily be 10 times as high once you add search fees, interviewing time, reference checking and travel and moving expenses.
Legal Obligations: Third, for US employers it’s important because of two legal implications of incompetent hiring. First, equal employment laws require non-discriminatory selection procedures for protected groups.
Negligent Hiring: Hiring workers with questionable backgrounds without proper safeguards.
Second, courts will find the employer liable when employers with criminal records or other problems use access to customers’ homes (or similar opportunities) to commit crimes. Lawyers call hiring workers with such backgrounds without proper safeguards or negligent hiring. In one case, Pointcase v KMS Investments an apartments manager with a passkey entered a woman’s apartment and assaulted her. The court found the apartment complex’s owner negligent in not properly checking the manager’s background. When lawyers recently sued Wal-Mart alleging that several employees with convictions for sexually related offenses had assaulted young girls, Wal-Mart instituted a new program of criminal background checks for qualified candidates.
Negligent hiring highlights the need to think through what the job’s human requirements really are. For example, non rapist isn’t likely to appear as a required knowledge skill, or ability in a job analysis of an apartment manager, but in situations like this screening for such tendencies is obviously required.
Avoiding negligent hiring claims requires taking reasonable action to investigate the candidate’s background. This includes:
1) Making a systematic effort to gain relevant information about the applicant and verifying all documentation.
2) Scrutinizing all information supplied by the applicant and following up on unexplained gaps in employment.
3) Keeping a detailed log of all attempts to obtain information, including names and dates for phone calls or other requests;
4) Rejecting applicants who make false statements of materials affects or who have conviction records for a offenses directly related and important to the job in question
5) Lancing the applicant’s privacy rights with others need to know especially when you discover damaging information
6) Taking immediate disciplinary action if problems arise.
Selection is thus important. We’ll start with testing. A test is basically a sample of a person’s behavior. Using a test (or other section Tool) assumes the device is both reliable and valid.
Reliability: The consistency of scores obtained by the same person when retested with the identical tests or with alternate forms of the same test.
Reliability is a test’s first requirement and refers to its consistency: A reliable test is one that yields consistent scores when a person takes two alternate forms of the test or when he or she takes the same test on two or more different occasions.
There are several ways to estimate consistency or reliability. You could administer the same test to the same people at two different points in time, comparing their test scores at time two with their scores at time one; this would be test estimate. Or you could administer a test and then administer that experts believe to be an equivalent test later; this would be an equivalent form of estimate. The Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) is an example of the latter. A test’s internal consistency is another reliability measure.
Selecting the right employees is important for three main reasons: performance, costs, and legal obligations.
Performance: First your own performance always depends in part on your subordinates. Employees with the right skills will do a better job for you and the company. Employees without these skills or who are abrasive or obstructionist won’t perform effectively and your own performance and the firm’s will suffer. The time to screen out undesirables is before they are in the door, not after.
Cost: Second, it is important because it’s costly to recruit and hire employees. Hiring and training even a clerk can cost $ 5,000 or more in fees and supervisory time. The total cost of hiring a manager could easily be 10 times as high once you add search fees, interviewing time, reference checking and travel and moving expenses.
Legal Obligations: Third, for US employers it’s important because of two legal implications of incompetent hiring. First, equal employment laws require non-discriminatory selection procedures for protected groups.
Negligent Hiring: Hiring workers with questionable backgrounds without proper safeguards.
Second, courts will find the employer liable when employers with criminal records or other problems use access to customers’ homes (or similar opportunities) to commit crimes. Lawyers call hiring workers with such backgrounds without proper safeguards or negligent hiring. In one case, Pointcase v KMS Investments an apartments manager with a passkey entered a woman’s apartment and assaulted her. The court found the apartment complex’s owner negligent in not properly checking the manager’s background. When lawyers recently sued Wal-Mart alleging that several employees with convictions for sexually related offenses had assaulted young girls, Wal-Mart instituted a new program of criminal background checks for qualified candidates.
Negligent hiring highlights the need to think through what the job’s human requirements really are. For example, non rapist isn’t likely to appear as a required knowledge skill, or ability in a job analysis of an apartment manager, but in situations like this screening for such tendencies is obviously required.
Avoiding negligent hiring claims requires taking reasonable action to investigate the candidate’s background. This includes:
1) Making a systematic effort to gain relevant information about the applicant and verifying all documentation.
2) Scrutinizing all information supplied by the applicant and following up on unexplained gaps in employment.
3) Keeping a detailed log of all attempts to obtain information, including names and dates for phone calls or other requests;
4) Rejecting applicants who make false statements of materials affects or who have conviction records for a offenses directly related and important to the job in question
5) Lancing the applicant’s privacy rights with others need to know especially when you discover damaging information
6) Taking immediate disciplinary action if problems arise.
Selection is thus important. We’ll start with testing. A test is basically a sample of a person’s behavior. Using a test (or other section Tool) assumes the device is both reliable and valid.
Reliability: The consistency of scores obtained by the same person when retested with the identical tests or with alternate forms of the same test.
Reliability is a test’s first requirement and refers to its consistency: A reliable test is one that yields consistent scores when a person takes two alternate forms of the test or when he or she takes the same test on two or more different occasions.
There are several ways to estimate consistency or reliability. You could administer the same test to the same people at two different points in time, comparing their test scores at time two with their scores at time one; this would be test estimate. Or you could administer a test and then administer that experts believe to be an equivalent test later; this would be an equivalent form of estimate. The Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) is an example of the latter. A test’s internal consistency is another reliability measure.
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