No abstract

No abstract

Discusses several matters deemed important to industrial psychologists. It is suggested that, given the intangible character of psychological variables, it would be fruitful to obtain the ideas of ordinary people about the variables that are significant in occupational behavior. Industrial psychologists ought to study organizations as "individuals" rather than just regarding them as social environments. The use of simulated organizations (e.g., mathematical models) would facilitate such investigations. Industrial psychologists should consider the differences among people to be quantitative rather than qualitative. Consequently, they should not devote their time to investigating differences among arbitrary types of people, but rather should direct their attention to the quantitative variables (e.g., social factors) which underlie those qualitatively different categories. The role and nature of theory and the impermanence of facts which emerge from empirical studies are also discussed.

No abstract

Classic psychometric theory holds that errors of measurement and of prediction are of the same magnitude for all individuals. Interactive effects are not recognized, and the psychological structure of all individuals is taken to be the same. To increase reliability and validity of measurement, then, attention is entirely focused on improvement of measuring devices. However, a substantial body of evidence indicates there are systematic individual differences in error, and in the importance a given trait has in determining a particular performance Reliability and validity of measurement can be increased by the use of moderator variables which predict individual differences in error and in the importance of traits.