Psychological testing and assessment
Cohen, R. J. & Swerdlik, M. E. (2018)
Chapter 15
Assessment, careers, and business

Career choice and career transition

A whole world of tests is available to help in various phases of career choice.
Historically, one variable considered closely related to occupational fulfilment and success is personal interest.

Measures of interest

Interest measure: an instrument designed to evaluate testtakers’ likes, dislikes, leisure activities, curiosities, and involvements in various pursuits for the purpose of comparison with groups of members of various occupations and professions.

The strong interest inventory

One of the first measures of interest.
Test items prove personal preferences in a variety of areas such as occupations, school subjects, and activities.
One a five-point continuum.

Measures of ability and aptitude

Achievement, ability, and aptitude tests all measure prior learning to some degree, although they differ in the uses to which the test data will be put.
Aptitude test may tap a greater amount of informal learning than achievement tests.
Achievement tests may be more limited and focused than aptitude tests.

Ability and aptitude measures vary widely in topics covered, specificity of coverage, and other variables.

• The Woderlic Personnel tests
  Measures mental ability in a general sense
• The Bennet mechanical comprehension test
  Measure of a testtaker’s ability to understand the relationship between physical forces and various tools as well as other common objects

The general aptitude test battery

General aptitiude test battery (GATB)
A tool used to identify aptitudes for occupations.
Just about anyone of working age can take this test.

Measures of personality

The use of personality measures in employment settings is a topic that has generated a fair amount of debate in the scholarly literature.

• Concerns about attempts by employees or prospective employees to ‘fake good’
• But personality measures are not necessarily fakable and the collected data is still viable even when attempts at faking occur

Although there are many personality tests, some will be more appropriate for the task at hand than others.
Today two of the most widely used personality test in the workplace are

• NEO PI-R
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Measuring personality traits

Personality assessment in the context of employment-related research might begin with the administration of a test designed to measure Costa and McCrae’s Big Five or other number of traits or types to a particular conceptualization of personality.

Costa and McCrea
NEO PI-R, most used today.

Integrity test: a test specifically designed to predict employees theft, honesty, adherence to established procedures, and/or potential violence.
Criterion-focused occupational personality scales (COPS): such narrowly defined personality tests in the context of employment-realted research.
Integrity tests may be used to screen new employees as well as to keep honest those already hired.

• Overt integrity tests
  Straigtforward
• Personality-based measures
  Resemble in may ways objective personality inventories
  May be far more subtle

Whether integrity tests measure what they purport to measure is debatable.
Reviews of validity are often mixed.

Measuring personality types

MBTI: a test used to classify assessees by psychological type.
The test has earned mixed reviews.
The test remains populair.

The relationship between personality and work performance

Establishing that there is a relationship between personality and work performance is not easy.
Many researchers have failed to discover a relationship.

• How is work performance defined?
  There is no single metric that can be used for all occupations
• Which aspects of personality to measure
  Different aspects of personality have presumably greater relevance for different occupations.
  In general, high conscientiousness and extraversion scores are correlated with good work performance
  High neuroticism scores with poor work performance

The emotional disposition of children influences how satisfied people are with their jobs.

Other measures

Numerous other tools of assessment may be used in career planning and pre-employment contexts, even though not specifically designed for that purpose.

Perhaps one of the most important instrument of assessment relevant to a career decision can be a questionnaire devised by assessees themselves.
It is written by the assessee and designed for administration to a person established in the career the assessee is contemplating.

All the tools of assessment we have discussed so far have application not only in career entry but also in career transition.

Screening, selection, classification, and placement

Screening: a relatively superficial process of evaluation based on certain minimal standards, criteria, or requirements.
Selection: a process whereby each person evaluated for a position will be either accepted or rejceted for that position.
Classification: categorization with respect to two or more criteria.
Placement: a disposition, transfer, or assignment to a group or category that may be made on the basis of one criterion.

The résumé and the letter of application

There is no single, standard résumé.
Typically, information rated to one’s work, qualifications, education, and experience is included on a résumé.
A letter of application lets a job applicant demonstrate motivation, businesslike writing skills, and his or her unique personality.

Neither a résumé nor a letter of application is likely to be the sole vehicle through which employment is secured.
Both are usually stepping-stones to personal interviews or other types of evaluations.
But, it may be the basis of rejection.

The application form

Application forms may be thought of as biographical sketches that supply employers with information pertinent to the acceptability of job candidates.

Letter of recommendation

Letters of recommendation may be a unique source of detailed information about the applicant’s past performance, the quality of the applicant's relationships with peers, and so forth.
Such letters are not without their drawbacks

• Applicants solicit letters from those they believe will say only positive things about them.
• The variance in the observational and writing skills of the letter writers

Interviews

Interviews provide an occasion for face-to-face exchange of information.
It may fall anywhere in the continuum from highly structured to highly unstructured.
The interviewer’s biases and prejudices may creep into the evaluation and influence the outcome.

Portfolio assessment

Portfolio assessment: an evaluation of an individual’s work sample for making some screening, selection, classification, or placement decision.
In portfolio assessment, the assessor may have to opportunity to

• Evaluate many work samples created by the assessee
• Obtain some understanding of the assesee’s work-related thought processes and habits
• Question the assesee further regarding various aspects of his or her work-related thinking and habits

The result may be a more complete picture of the prospective employee at work in the new setting

Performance tests

Requires the assessees to demonstrate certain skills or abilities under a specified set of circumstances.
To obtain a job-related performance sample.

Leaderless group technique: a group exercise in which the participants’ task is to work together in the solution of some problem or the achievement of some goal.

In-basked technique: simulates the way a manager or an executive deals with an in-based filled with mail, memos, announcements, and various other notices and directives. Asessess have a limited amount of time to deal with it.

The assessment centre

Assessment centre: an organizationally standardized procedure for evaluation involving multiple assessment techniques.

Physical tests

Physical requirements of a job must be taken into consideration when screening, selecting, classifying, and placing applicants.
Depending on the job’s specific requirements, a number of physical subtests may be used.

Physical test: a measurement that entails evaluation of one’s somatic health and intactness, and observable sensory and motor abilities.

Drug testing

A great deal of concern lies about employee drug use.
Drug test: an evaluation undertaken to determine the presence, if any, of alcohol or other psychotropic substances, by means of laboratory analysis of blood, urine, hair, or other biological specimens.

Cognitive ability, productivity, and motivation measures

Measures of cognitive ability

In general, cognitive-based tests are popular tools of selection because they have been shown to be valid predictors of future performance.

Considerations

Personnel selection and diversity issues

There are consistent group differences on cognitive ability tests.
Average differences between groups on tests of cognitive ability may contribute to limiting diversity.

Productivity

Productivity: output or value yielded relative to work effort made.
Measures of productivity help to define not only where a business is but also what it needs to do to get where it wants to be.

• Forced distribution technique: involves distributing a predetermined number or percentage of assessees into various categories that describe performance.
• Critical incidents techniques: involves the supervisor recording positive and negative employee behaviours. The supervisor catalogues the notations according to various categories for ready reference when an evaluation needs to be made.
• Peer ratings or evaluations

Motivation

Maslow constructed a theoretical hierarchy of human needs and proposed that, after one category of need is met, people seek to satisfy the next category of need.
Employers who subscribe to Maslow’s theory would seek to identify

• The need level required of the employee by the job
• The current need level of the prospective employee

Alderfer proposed that once a need is satisfied, the organism may strive to satisfy it to an even greater degree.

Motivation: stemming from incentives that are either primarily internal or primarily external in origin.

• Intrinsic motivation
  The primary driving force stems from within the individual
• Extrinsic motivation
  The primary driving force stems from outside the individual (like rewards)

Work Preference Inventory (WPI): a scale designed to assess aspects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Four-point scale.

Burnout an its measurement

Burnout: an occupational health problem associated with cumulative occupational stress.
A psychological syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur among individuals who work with other people in some capacity.

Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI): the most widely used measure of burnout.
Sixpoint – scale.

Job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational culture

Attitude: a presumably learned disposition to react in some characteristic manner to a particular stimulus.
Attitudes do not necessarily predict behaviour.

Job satisfaction

Satisfied workers in the workplace are believed to be:

• More productive
• More consistent in work output
• Less likely to complain
• Less likely to be absent from work or be replaced

Job satisfaction: a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting form the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences.

Organizational commitment

Organizational commitment: the strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organization.
This ‘strength’ has been conceptualized and measured in ways that emphasize both its attitudinal and behavioural components.
Organizational commitment refers to one’s feelings of loyalty to, identification with, and involvement in an organization.

Organizational commitment questionnaire (OCQ)
Most widely used measure of organizational commitment.
Questions have been raised against its construct validity.

Measurement of attitude extends far beyond the workplace.

Organizational culture

Organizational culture: the totality of socially transmitted behaviour patterns characteristic of a particular organization or company, including

• The structure of the organization and the roles within it
• The leadership style
• The prevailing values, norms, sanctions, and support mechanisms
• The past traditions and folklore, methods of enculturation, and characteristic ways of interacting with people and institutions outside the culture

Organizations and corporations have developed distinctive cultures.
Organizational culture applies to a way of work.
It provides a way of coping with internal and external demands.

Other tools of assessment for business applications

Consumer psychology

Consumer psychology: a branch of social psychology that deals primarily with the development, advertising, and marketing of products and services.

The measurement of attitudes

Attitude is typically measured by self-report, using tests and questionnaires.
But:

• People differ in their ability to be introspective and in their level of self-awareness
• People differ in the extent to which they are willing to be candid about their attitudes

Measuring implicit attitudes

Implicit attitude: a nonconscious, automatic association in memory that produces a disposition to react in some characteristic manner to a particular stimulus.

Attempts to measure implicit attitudes have taken many forms.

Implicit Attitude Test (IAT)
A computerized scoring task by which implicit attitudes are gauged with reference to the testtaker’s reaction times.
Questions about this approach

• The theory, if any, underlying implicit attitude measurement
• The psychosocial correlates of the measures
• Whether or not the measures truly provide access to mental processes that are not conscious.

Surveys

A survey: a fixed list of questions administered to a selected sample of persons for the purpose of learning about consumers’ attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and/or behaviour with regard to the targeted products, services, or advertising.

There are many ways to conduct a survey

• Poll
  Yes-no response.
• Face-to-face interview
• Online, telephone or mail surveys
  Reduce biases associated with personal interaction
• More cost-effective

Care must be exercised in interpreting the results of a survey

• Response rates may differ
• Questions may be asked in different forms
• Data collection procedures may vary
• Sometimes research questions cannot be answered through a survey or a poll
• Consumers may be unwillingly or reluctant to respond to some survey or poll questions

Motivation research methods

Motivation research typically involves analysing motives for consumer behaviour and attitudes.

Motivation research methods

• Individual interviews
• Focus groups
  A group interview led by a trained, independent moderator who, ideally, has a knowledge of group discussion facilitation techniques and group dynamics.
  Depending of the requirements of the moderator’s client, the group discussion can be relatively structured or unstructured.

Focus groups are widely employed in consumer research to

• Generate hypotheses that can be further tested quantitatively
• Generate information for designing or modifying consumer questionnaires
• Provide general background information about product category
• Provide impressions of new product concepts for which little information is available
• Obtain new ideas about older products
• Generate ideas for product development or names for existing products
• Interpret the results of previously obtained quantitative results

Dimensional qualitative research: an approach to qualitative research that seeks to ensure a study is comprehensive and systematically form a psychological perspective by guiding the study design and proposed questions for discusion on BASIC ID dimesions

• Behaviour
• Affect
• Sensation
• Imagery
• Cognition
• Interpersonal relation
• Drugs

Behavioural observation

It is not unusual for marked researchers to station behavioural observers in stores to monitor what really prompts a consumer to buy this or that product at the point of choice.