Recent research has provided clear evidence that personality factors are associated with job performance. The construct of conscientiousness has been shown to be a particularly promising predictor of overall job performance. Some authors have proposed that conscientiousness might be the ‘g’ of personality and predict performance in most occupational areas. The nature of the construct of conscientiousness is reviewed and consideration given to the likely behaviour associated with high conscientiousness. It is hypothesized that, given the requirements of managerial work, the criterion‐related validity of conscientiousness may not extend to all managerial jobs. Conscientiousness scores are derived for a sample of managers (N= 437), with the aid of personality questionnaire data. In a concurrent validity design these scores are correlated with indicators of current job performance, promotability and specific job performance factors. The correlation of conscientiousness with current performance is close to zero and the correlation with promotability is ‐.20. The pattern of relationships between conscientiousness and the job performance factors is used to interpret the finding that conscientiousness is not influential in determining managerial performance. The results suggest that there may be limits to the range of occupational areas in which conscientiousness is closely linked with job performance.

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This paper introduces the concept of user validity and provides a new perspective on the validity of interpretations from tests. Test interpretation is based on outputs such as test scores, profiles, reports, spread-sheets of multiple candidates' scores, etc. The user validity perspective focuses on the interpretations a test user makes given the purpose of the test and the information provided in the test output. This innovative perspective focuses on how user validity can be extended to content, criterion and to some extent construct-related validity. It provides a basis for researching the validity of interpretations and an improved understanding of the appropriateness of different approaches to score interpretation, as well as how to design test outputs and assessments which are pragmatic and optimal. Education, 1999;Kane, 2009;Messick, 1989). Yet to what extent are the current conceptions of validity and the practice of validation concerned with the validity of interpretation? Criterion-related validity, for example, and the practice of validating occupational assessments (including meta-analyses) is still to a large extent focused on establishing relationships between test scores and criteria.Test scores rather than actual interpretations are the focus of validation. There is a need to further develop and articulate a validity of interpretation to better address the shift in the definition of validity towards interpretation and the decisions individual test users are actually making based on test scores.The test user for the purposes of this article is the interpreter of the test output: a manager reading a psychometric multi-trait narrative report summary on a candidate prior to interview; a trained test user interpreting a personality profile to aid the test taker's development; a test taker being given direct online feedback to aid their self-selection as to whether to apply for a particular role; an I/O Psychologist deciding what rules or equations to apply in a selection system for a particular role, etc. and what latitude (if any) to give other test users in influencing selection decisions. A broader definition of a test user might include an applicant who has not received feedback, however, for the purposes of this article such an individual would be regarded as a test taker rather than a test user.Although evidence from different aspects of validity such as content and criterion-related validity provide a basis to support potential test interpretations, they generally do not focus on the validity of interpretation from the users' perspective itself. In their stead, they tend to A User Validity Perspective Beyond the Test Score 4 focus on providing general support for a particular proposed interpretation that a test user could make. This support for an interpretation may be achieved, for example, by demonstrating that there is a relationship between a test score and criterion. While establishing the relationship between a predictor test score and a criterion can be an important consideratio...

This paper attempts to provide some insight into the individual attributes underlying managerial performance. Managerial performance, like all aspects of human behaviour, is a function of both the personal attributes of the actor and the situation in which he or she exists. Managers work in a wide variety of situations and it is clear that job demands, job role, colleagues, organization systems and other situational factors will exert an influence on the behaviour of any individual manager. It is also reasonable to expect, on the basis of everyday experience and research evidence, that the individual attributes of a manager will influence his or her behaviour. The theoretical basis for this paper recognizes that behaviour is a result of the complex, reciprocating interplay of situational, personal and behavioural factors (Bandura, 1982;Robertson, 1993). Even a complete understanding of the specific personal factors involved in determining managerial behaviour would provide an incomplete model for understanding and predicting managerial performance, since situational factors also have a clear role to play in determining behaviour. Nevertheless, a clear grasp of these personal attributes should provide some help in seeking to unravel the complex interplay of behavioural, situational and personal factors.The empirical focus for this paper is on the personal, psychological attributes associated with managerial behaviour. In the past decade or so there has been considerable interest in the identification of the competencies associated with successful managerial performance (Boam and Sparrow, 1992;Boyatzis, 1982;Dulevwicz, 1989;Thornton and Byham, 1982). The competency approach provides a useful framework for examining managerial effectiveness but it has not yet been developed to the point where there is agreement on the key competencies involved in managerial performance. In fact, definitions of competencies are often poor and contradictory. Although some authors have proposed sets of competencies with broad applicability (e.g. Cockerill, Current models of the factors underlying management performance make use of a variety of variables at different levels of analysis. A framework is presented in which variables of three different types are linked together. Using data from a sample (n = 437) of British managers this article explores relationships between personality factors (using the big-five factors), work competencies and managerial performance. Results from the analyses reveal a set of underlying competency factors, which show different patterns of correlation with two facets of performance: current proficiency and promotability. In turn, these factors and the facets of performance show relationships with the big-five personality factors. Current proficiency is more closely related to competencies of organization, specialization and analysis -competencies more likely to be displayed by people who are conscientious and introverted. Promotability is linked more closely to competencies concerning action/motivation, fl...

Individual Psychological Assessment (IPA) is a very widely offered service in Organizational Psychology. It generally consists of a psychologist or HR practitioner using a combination of interview and psychometrics to arrive at a detailed assessment of an individual's capabilities in relation to a job they are being considered for. Although much used, this practice has limited supporting evidence of its validity-not least because of the methodological difficulties in conducting research on this subject-and has been criticized accordingly. The current study examines the use of IPAs with 115 middle and senior management level candidates in a civil service context. All candidates completed a set of psychometric measures and had an in-depth interview with a psychologist as part of a standardized process. The ratings made by the assessors were correlated with a criterion measure of potential for promotion derived from multisource feedback ratings obtained on these candidates some months later. Analysis of the results indicated that three of the four attributes rated by assessors correlated significantly with the criterion measure. Further, assessors' ratings were found to show incremental validity over that provided by psychometric test scores alone.These findings are discussed in terms of the use of IPAs in senior level assessment. 1998; Stamoulis, 2009) that there is little consistency between assessors in terms of the measures they use or the approach they take to assessment. Thus, in most instances the common assessment methodology and the candidate sample size needed to make any viable comparisons are simply not present.This situation has led to writers in this domain having to look for broader indicators of validity, for example, extrapolating from studies Int J Select Assess. 2017;25:11-17 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ijsa