Policy Issues in Employment Testing

340 Pages·1994·5.739 MB·English

by  Linda C. Wing, Bernard R. Gifford (auth.), Linda C. Wing, Bernard R. Gifford (eds.)

Policy Issues
in Employment Testing
Evaluation in Education and
Human Services
Editors:
George F. Madaus, Boston College,
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Daniel L. Stufflebeam, Western Michigan
University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, U.S.A.
National Commission on Testing
and Public Policy
Gifford, B.; Test Policy and the Politics of
Opportunity Allocation: The Workplace and
the Law
Gifford, B.; Test Policy and Test Performance:
Education, Language, and Culture
Gifford, B., and Wing, L; Test Policy in
Defense
Gifford, B., and O'Connor, M.; Changing
Assessments, Alternative Views of Aptitude,
Achievement, and Instruction
Gifford, B.; Policy Perspectives on Educational
Testing
Haney, W., Madaus, G., and Lyons, R.; The
Fractured Marketplace for Standardized
Testing
Policy Issues
in Employment Testing
edited by
Linda C. Wing
Harvard University
Bernard R. Gifford
University of California at Berkeley
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Policy issues in employment testing / edited by Linda C. Wing and
Bernard Gifford.
p. cm.—(Evaluation in education and human services)
ISBN 978-94-010-4976-4 ISBN 978-94-011-2202-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-2202-3
1. Employment tests. 2. Employment tests—United States.
I. Wing, Linda C. II. Gifford, Bernard R. III. Series.
HF5549.5.E5P65 1993
658.3'1125—dc20 93-10783
CIP
Copyright © 1994 by Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1994
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1994
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publisher, Springer Science+
Business Media New York Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Assinippi Park,
Norwell, Massachusetts 02061.
Printed on acid-free paper.
Contents
Contributing Authors vii
Introduction
Linda C. Wing and Bernard R. Gifford
1
A Critique of Validity Generalization 13
Lawrence R. James, Robert G. Demaree, and Stanley A. Mulaik
2
Employment Testing: A Public Sector Viewpoint 77
Joel P. Wiesen, Nancy Abrams, and Sally A. McAttee
3
The Validity and Fairness of Alternatives to Cognitive Tests 131
Richard R. Reilly and Michael A. Warech
4
Recent Trends in Assessment: England and Wales 225
Harvey Goldstein and Alison Wolf
5
Employment Selection and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act: The Legal
Debate Surrounding Selection Criteria, Validation, and Affirmative Action 269
Douglas S. McDowell and Garen E. Dodge
Addendum to Chapter 4 311
Index 315
v
Contributing Authors
Nancy E. Abrams is currently working as a consultant specializing in
personnel management and measurement. Her clients represent a broad
spectrum of public and private sector organizations. She received her
Ph.D. in Psychology: Measurement and Evaluation from Columbia
University. She was employed for a number of years as the Principal
Consulting Psychologist in the New York Region of the U.S. Office
of Personnel Management. Nancy is a past president of Internation Per
sonnel Management Association Assessment Council (IPMAAC) and
currently serves as IPMAAC's representative to the International
Personnel Management Association Executive Council. Nancy is also the
current president of the newly established Personnel Testing Council of
Upstate New York.
Robert G. Demaree is a Research Consultant and Professor Emeritus of
Psychology at Texas Christian University. He received his Ph.D. in 1950
from the University of Illinois. He has the leading role in a wide variety
of research projects involving multivariate measurement, prediction, and
evaluation. He is an author of over 70 research publications and papers.
Garen E. Dodge is an attorney with the Washington, D.C. firm of Keller
and Heckman, specializes in the practice of employment and labor law.
Mr. Dodge advises and represents corporations and associations in a
wide variety of employment and discrimination matters, including the
Americans with Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1991. He
appears frequently before employer groups regarding employment issues,
and has appeared on radio and television programs, as well as national
vii
Vlll CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS
teleconferences sponsored by PBS and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Mr. Dodge is co-author of a book titled Winning the War on Drugs:
The Role of Workplace Testing, published in 1989 by the National Foun
dation for the Study of Employment Policy. The book was endorsed in
1990 by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, and serves as the basis
for a Senate drug testing bill. Mr. Dodge is also the author of a paper
entitled State and Local Laws Regarding Drug Testing of Employees,
published by the Bureau of National Affairs, and is co-author of the
nationally marketed Drug-Free Workplace Kit, published by the National
Association of Manufacturers. In the OSHA area, he has co-authored an
article for the Employee Relations Law Journal titled Criminal Pro
secutions for Occupational Injuries: An Issue of Growing Concern, and
is actively involved in the OSHA reform legislative area. In addition,
he is a member of the editorial Board of Employment Testing, and has
contributed numerous articles to their bi-weekly reporter.
Bernard R. Gifford, chair of the National Commission on Testing and
Public Policy, is Chancellor's Professor of Education in the School of
Education at the University of California, Berkeley. He served there as
Dean of the Graduate School of Education from 1983 through 1989.
He received his Ph.D. in radiation biology and biophysics from the
University of Rochester. Gifford has published in a number of disciplinary
areas, ranging from applied physics to public policy. In recent years he
has devoted most of his efforts to writing about the process of educational
change and reform. His latest books are History in the Schools.: What
Shall We Teacher? (Macmillan, 1988), Test Policy and the Politics of
Opportunity Allocation: The Workplace and the Law (Kluwer, 1989);
Testing Policy and Test Performance: Education, Language and Culture
(Kluwer, 1989); and Policy Perspectives on Educational Testing (Kluwer,
1993).
Harvey Goldstein is Professor of Statistical Methods at the Institute of
Education in the University of London. His principal interests are in
educational assessment, especially the technical aspects, and in statistical
models for the analysis of multilevel data. Most recently he has been
concerned with applying such models to the presentation of examination
and test results.
Dr. Lawrence R. James holds the Pilot Oil Chair of Excellence in Manage
ment, and Industrial-Organizational Psychology at the University of
Tennessee. Dr. James is the author of numerous articles and papers and
CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS IX
coauthor of a book on causal analysis. He is a member of the editorial
boards of Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Bahavior and
Human Decision Processes, Human Performance, and Human Resources
Management. Dr. James also serves as a consultant to a number of
businesses and government agencies.
Dr. James earned his Ph.D. at the University of Utah in 1970, soon
after which he was awarded a National Research Council postdoctorate.
Following the postdoctorate, he joined the faculty at the Institute of
Behavior Research, Texas Christian University, where he attained the
rank of Professor and headed the Organizational-Industrial Research
Group. In 1980, Dr. James moved to the Georgia Institute of Tech
nology, where he was a Professor of Psychology and Coordinator of the
Industrial-Organizational Psychology Program. Dr. James moved to the
University of Tennessee in 1988.
As a leading researcher in Organizational Psychology, Dr. James has
been active in studying the effects of organizational environments on
individual adaptation, motivation, and productivity. His statistical con
tributions have been designed to make possible tests of new models in
areas such as organizational climate, leadership, and personnel selection.
Sally A. McAttee is Staffing Services Manager for the City of Milwaukee,
where she is responsible for personnel recruitment and selection. She has
directed the development of and conducted research on written, oral,
and performance tests; assessment centers; and training and experience
ratings, including behavioral consistency ratings. She was previously the
head of test validation for the State of Michigan, where she began her
assessment career in 1967.
She has a Ph.D. in Measurement and Evaluation from Michigan
State University and is a former president of the International Personnel
Management Association Assessment Council.
Douglas S. McDowell is a partner with the Washington, D.C. labor law
firm of McGuiness & Williams. He specializes in equal employment,
wrongful discharge, and other employment-related areas. Mr. McDowell
also is General Counsel of the Equal Employment Advisory Council-an
employer's association that files amicus curiae briefs in significant EEO
cases. Under his direction, the Council has filed 330 briefs, over 130 of
which were in the U.S. Supreme Court. Several of these briefs involved
affirmative action issues before the United States Supreme Court. Mr.
McDowell has lectured extensively on EEO and labor issues. He also is
the author of a book entitled Affirmative Action After the Johnson
x CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS
Decision: Practical Guidance for Planning and Compliance. He filed
briefs in the supreme courts Title VII cases that were the subject of the
Civil Rights Act of 1991. Further, he is the author of the Legislative
History of that Act. He is the past Chairman of the American Bar
Association's Subcommittee on Affirmative Action and Reverse Dis
crimination. He presently is chairman of the ABA Labor Law Section's
Federal Legislative Liaison Committee and also is a member of the
ABA's Litigation Section.
Stanley A. Mulaik is Professor of Psychology at the Georgia Institute of
Technology, where he teaches courses in introductory statistics, multi
variate statistics, factor analysis, linear causal modeling, measurement,
and personality theory in both the undergraduate and graduate
psychology curriculum.
He is the author of a leading text on factor analysis. The Foundations
of Factor Analysis, published by McGraw-IIill in 1972. He is the second
author with L. R. James and J.M. Brett of Causal Analysis: Models,
Assumptions, and Data, published by Sage Publications in 1982. He has
authored (1982) an entry on "Factor Analysis," in the Encyclopedia
of Educational Research, a chapter (1975) on "Confirmatory Factor
Analysis" in Walberg and Amick's Introductory Multivariate Statistics:
Applications in Psychology, Education and the Social Sciences, and
"Confirmatory Factor Analysis" (1988) in Cattell and Nesselroade's (eds.)
Handbook of Multivariate Experimental Psychology. He has numerous
technical papers in Psychometrika and Psychological Bulletin on topics
related to factor analysis and structural equation modeling.
Professor Mulaik's current interests are in the history and philosophy
of science as relates to the development of multivariate statistics. He has
written several papers on causality, the rise of exploratory statistics from
British empiricism, and the idea of objectivity in multivariate statistics,
publishing in such journals as Philosophy of Science and the British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science. He has also made contributions
recently to the literature (Psychological Bulletin) on goodness-of-fit in
dices in assessing structural equation models, where he has introduced the
concept of the parsimony ratio, that is, the ratio of the degrees of
freedom in a model to the possible total degrees of freedom available in
the data, to adjust goodness of fit indices that are inflated by the estimation
of parameters.
Professor Mulaik received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the
University of Utah in 1963. He received a postdoctoral fellowship in
quantitative psychology at the University of North Carolina in 1966-1967,
CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS Xl
and stayed on as an assistant professor in the L.L. Thurstone Psychometric
Laboratory at the University of North Carolina from 1967 to 1970. He
has been at Georgia Tech since 1970.
Richard R. Reilly received the Ph.D. degree in Industrial/Organizational
Psychology from the University of Tennessee in 1969. He was a research
psychologist at the Educational Testing Service from 1969 to 1976, where
he conducted a variety of applied research studies related to testing and
assessment. From 1976 to 1982 he was on the staff of American Telephone
& Telegraph Co., where he was responsible for the development and
validation of selection procedures for the Bell System. In 1982 he joined
the faculty of Stevens Institute of Technology, where he is Professor or
Applied Psychology. He has published over 40 articles and chapters
on topics related to selection and assessment. Dr. Reilly has been a
consultant to government and industry on problems related to employee
selection and has testified as an expert witness in several court cases
involving employee selection.
Michael A. Warech received the Ph.D. degree in Industrial/Organizational
Psychology from Stevens Institute of Technology. He has been a
consultant for Avon Products, Inc. and is currently an associate of
Assessment Alternatives, Inc., where he has consulted on training, job
analysis, and selection problems for government and industry.
Joel P. Wiesen is an industrial psychologist. He received his Ph.D.
in psychology from Lehigh University in 1975. He has spent most of his
professional career researching and developing valid and practical
personnel assessment and selection programs and procedures in both
the public and private sectors. He has directed the civil service test
development and validation program for all municipal and state civil
service positions in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As an expert
witness, he has been involved in numerous employment discrimination
court cases and administrative proceedings. After working fulltime
for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for 10 years, he took advantage
of the Commonwealth's Alternative Work Option program. He now
works parttime for the Commonwealth, directing the personnel research
and evaluation efforts of the Massachusetts Department of Per
sonnel Administration, lectures at Northeastern University, and heads
his own consulting firm, Applied Personnel Research, located in
Newton, Massachusetts.