This article demonstrates the congruence of the inductive and deductive models in logic and studies this congruence in the context of new test items designed to exemplify general-to-particular induction, a field virtually untapped in psychology to this date. Results obtained from the study corroborate the logical foundations of deduction and induction as convergent models. Factor analysis of the items demonstrated factorial convergence, which lends additional support to the postulate of convergence.Requests for reprints should be sent to Magda Colberg,
This paper addresses the legal and psychometric issues related to nondiscrimination in employment testing for persons who have disabilities. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended, introduced the concept of such nondiscrimination into activities funded by the federal government. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 extended the concept to the entire private sector. The psychometric literature on nondiscriminatory testing was, until recently, limited to research in the civil service context. However, the Educational Testing Service's recent large-scale studies of disabled test-takers on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) have provided a wealth of information about the comparability of results when accommodations are made in the testing process. A brief overview presents typical types of testing accommodations and their applications to individuals with visual, hearing, physical, and specific learning disabilities.
In the competitive employment situation, in which some kind of standardized assessment instrument is used to compare applicants and select the most qualified, persons with certain physical handicaps are at a disadvantage because their handicap impedes measurement of the intended knowledges, skills, or abilities through the standardized instrument. This paper describes the problems that arise in standardized employment testing, especially for visually impaired and hearing impaired persons. Solutions are proposed for these problems wherever possible. For visually impaired persons, the majority of the problems arise from the need to present test questions in an appropriate medium (e.g., braille) and to adjust time limits accordingly. Among hearing impaired persons, those who are profoundly, prelingually deaf tend to perform poorly on verbal tests. This true deficit in the English language raises fundamental questions for personnel selection specialists about the nature of verbal job requirements. F ederal laws and regulations of the last decade have introduced the concept of nondiscrimination into the field of employment testing for handicapped persons. The regulations that have had the most impact in this regard are the regula tions to implement Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, issued by the De partment of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1977. The wording of these regulations with respect to employment testing was also used by the U. S. Office of Personnel Management (formerly the U. S. Civil Service Commission) in developing its proce dures for processing complaints of discrimination based on physical or mental hand icap (29 CFR 1613). Both sets of regulations require reasonable accommodation to Mary Anne Nester is a personnel research psychologist in the Office of Staffing Policy of the U. S. Office of Personnel Management, where she has performed psychometric research and development work for 10 years. Prior to that she was research psychologist at Overbrook School for the Blind in Philadelphia and assistant professor of psychology at Beaver College in Glenside, Pennsylvania. She received her Ph. D. in psychology from the City University of New York. Her area of expertise is human ability measurement, including the improvement of measurement for persons with physical disabilities and the use of logic-based testing. The author wishes to thank Magda Colberg and McKay Vernon for their review of an earlier version of this manuscript. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position of the U.S. Office of Personnel Man agement.
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