L11 - Org Psych 3 Flashcards
What is an ability test?
A test meant to identify how good someone will be at a certain job.
What ability test did Sir Francis Galton develop?
RT and sensory tests of intelligence
What issue did James Cattell find with Sir Francis Galton’s RT (reaction time) and sensory tests of intelligence?
They didn’t correlate with school grades
What ability test did Alfred Binet develop?
First useful individual intelligence test (for children)
Who revised Alfred Binets first useful individual intelligence test for children?
What did this individual develop as a consequence?
Lewis Terman
Developed the concept of IQ
What ability test did Robert Yerkes and Arthur Otis develop?
How did this ability test evolve over time?
Group tests of intelligence for personnel selection in US army for WW1 (Army Alpha and Army Beta)
Similar test swere then used for ordinary jobs
Who were ability tests initially designed for?
Military personnel
General intelligence tests are found to predict success in a variety of jobs, however, it doesn’t account for all variance.
What is the correlation between general intelligence and work performance?
What % of variance is accounted for with general intelligence tests?
.3 - .4
16% of variance
Since intelligence tests don’t fully predict performance in the workplace, what we developed instead?
Work aptitude tests designed to assess work related abilities
e.g. mechanical reasoning, spatial, numerical, motor abilities
For work aptitude tests, how are individuals assessed?
Using the minimum scores necessary for success in a job.
e.g. accounting; one would want high scores in number skills; plumbing, one wants high scores in mechanical skills
Work aptitude batteries are designed to assess what?
A range of basic abilities relevant to many jobs.
- This meant avoiding many different tests for different jobs.*
- Can administer the same measure independent of the occupation because you have a test which covers most things.*
Name 2 examples of aptitude test batteries
GATB; DAT
What do we need to confirm in order to assess the usefulness of ability tests?
Reliability; Test-Retest
Validity; Face Validity, Concurrent validity, Predictive validity
Older ability tests (1920s) were often based only on ____ validity
Face Validity
Reviews of validation studies from the 1950s onwards showed that aptitude tests did _______
No better than IQ
Which kind of jobs are ability tests important for?
Clerical Jobs and physically demanding jobs (e.g. fire fighters, police)
What might you do to test the predictive validity of a ability test?
Have someone take the test before they are employed but don’t look at the results.
Then let them perform at the job for a while and then compare the results of the ability test and their performance at the job
What are work samples?
What is another name for this?
A type of selection test that requires the candidate to demonstrate proficiency on tasks representative of the job
- (e.g. driving tests, or using equipment)*
- Another name: Job Replicas*
What type of ability test has research shown is the most valid method for selection for a job?
Work Samples
What are 4 limitations of work samples?
Most ability tests do not assess personality.
Why might this be a problem?
Personality is intuitively associated with certain jobs.
e.g. successful sales people tend to be extraverted
Why is it a risk to use personality tests for work selection?
They were not designed for work selection.
- e.g. those with many factors (Cattell’s 16PF) tend not to be reliable enough for job selection*
- Those with few factors (Eysenck’s Personality Inventory) are limited to jobs requiring broad personality characteristics*
What is The Myers - Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)?
Can this be used for work selection?
Personality test based on Jung’s theory of personality
More suited to leadership training and work group development than work selection.
How many personality types are in the MBTI? (Myers - Briggs Type Indicator)
These are based off a person’s status on ‘bipolar dimensions’, how many of these are there?
16 personality types
4 bipolar dimensions
What are the 4 bipolar dimensions in the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)?
Extraversion-Intraversion
Sensing-Intuition
Thinking-Feeling
Judgment-Perception
In the MBTI, what do the questions require people to indicate?
Questions require people to indicate their preferences for;
Directing their energies
Processing information
Making decisions
Organising their lives
What are the strengths of the MBTI? (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)
Ease of understanding
High face validity
Appeal among users
What do critics say about the MBTI? (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)
- The extent to which one can conceptualise personality into ‘types’; the validity of the 4 dimensions.
- The lack of interpretation between a low score and a high score
* (e.g. you can be a strong or mild extravert and still be classified as the same E type)*
What is the ‘five-factor model of personality’ (otherwise named the “Big 5” theory of personality)?
Personality Assessment that comprises of 5 factors - OCEAN
What are the 5 factors of the Big 5 theory of personality (“five-factor model of personality”)?
“O-C-E-A-N”
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
Who empirically supported the validity of the “five-factor model of personality”?
McCrae and Costa (1987)
Hogan (1991)
Which “Big 5” personality factor has been found to correlate with job performance across many jobs and many cultures?
Conscientiousness
The rest of the personality factors are limited in predicting job performance
Personality tests can be faked if someone knows what personality the job is looking for.
How might you detect if someone is faking
Adding questions to detect faking (e.g. I have never told a lie - true/false, have two questions worded differently but measuring the same thing)
Non verbal faking tests have also been investigated (e.g. response time measuring; increased RT = unlikely to be natural)
What do researchers think that faking has on the validity of personality tests?
Depends on the researcher, some say its a major problem and others say it doesn’t affect validity much.
What is a personality test of integrity/honesty?
Integrity tests either assess attitudes towards honesty e.g. theft at work or use personality items found to relate to dishonesty.
Are lie detectors a valid test of integrity/honesty?
No, validity of lie detectors led them to be prohibited in the USA except in public national security, law enforcement jobs.
In AUs they cant be used as evidence in courts or for work purposes.
What do experts think about using personality tests in job selection?
Expert opinion is divided.
Some say that they have little vocational use, others believe personality traits can be useful for some jobs.
Muchinsky - “the influence of personality in job performance should not be overestimated, but it should also not be underestimated”
Can ability tests and interest inventories be useful for vocational guidance?
Yes
Doesn’t mean it will be perfectly accurate
What are the most common methods of personnel selection in job selection?
Interview, References and Application Forms
What are the 4 types of job interviews?
1) One or more interviewers
2) Unstructured, structured or semi-structured questions
3) Trained or untrained interviewers
4) General or specific questions
What are the two types of interviews styles that are more reliable?
Behavioural Interview (past)
Situational Interview (hypothetical)
What is a Behavioural Interview?
A type of interview in which candidates are asked to describe a problem/situation that they experienced in the past and asked how they behaved in the situation.
Looking at their past and how they acted previously.
What is a Situational Interview?
A type of interview in which candidates are presented with a problem situation and asked how they would respond to it.
A hypothetical question is given to see how they would respond in such a situation
Are structured interviews or unstructued interviews more valid for predicting performance?
Structured interviews
Do structured interviews or semi-structured interviews provide more information?
Semi-structured interviews
It gives you the opportunity to ‘probe’ answers for more information
Are structured interviews or unstructured interviews associated with ‘greater fairness’?
Structured interviews
Everyone is asked the same questions
Are unstructured interviews or structured interviews more valuable for covering information about the organisation, its values and culture?
Unstructured interviews
Helps the candidate discover whether they would enjoy working at the job, however not as useful for employers
How does Muchinsky rate the validity of the interview for predicting job performance?
Validity is lower than work samples and other tests
Yet it is still one of the most commonly used selection methods for employees
What are some reasons that interviews have lower validity for predicting job performance?
What are 3 reasons that interviews continue to be popular?
What is an assessment center?
A method of assessing job candidates usually for managerial jobs using several methods and several raters who evaluate them
- Assessors rate their ability*
- Can be done over a number of days or even in the field*
What are assessment centers intended to provide?
Intended to provide the basis for judgements or predicctions of behaviours believed to be related or known to be relevent to specific work or workplace.
What are the 3 characteristics of assessment centers?
What are the limitations of assessment centers?
1) There is a problem in the way raters rate. There tends to be a lack of independence across dimensions (e.g. I rated you high in leadership and therefore ill rate you high in another dimension)
2) Validty in predicting success in management is .4 but predicting job performance is lower
Are letters of recommendation a valid tool for assessing how well a person will do on a job?
No, they are the least valid method of assessment
What are the problems with using letters of recommendation (references)?
1) All recommendations are positive (because applicants wont include negative ones)
2) Applicant chooses who will write the letters (e.g. only ask those they are friendly with)
3) Some people will make recommendations that have an inverse relationship with the criterion (i.e. they will recommend someone that the company should probably not hire)
How might letters of recommendation be improved
1) If they are confidential (i.e. candidate doesn’t see the letter before it is forwarded to the employer)
2) Telephone interviews (calling past employer rather than going through potential employee)
Summary of the lecture slides for job selection - understand points for the exam on both sides - questions should already be in other cue cards
Mainly a card for making sure you understand the important features of the lecture
What are the four major evaluative standards for checking if ability tests are useful?
Validity; Predictive Accuracy
Fairness; Differential predictive accuracy across different groups
Applicability; Interview highest applicability and most universally used
Cost; Subjective and arbitrary, but highly relevant to organisations
