ASSESSMENTS OF HIGHER‐LEVEL PERSONNEL: IV. THE VALIDITY OF ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES BASED ON SYSTEMATICALLY VARIED INFORMATION¹

The Validity of Individual Psychological Assessments for Entry-Level Police and Firefighter Positions

“…It is interesting to note that while general impression and overall recommendation were highly correlated, general impression, which was a mechanical combination of expert ratings, was more predictive than the subjective integration of this information as reflected in overall recommendation. This is consistent with the literature on clinical versus statistical prediction, which has generally found that expert judgment can be useful in assessing specific competencies, but that when it comes to integrating information, mechanical combination tends to outperform expert judgment (Holt, 1958;Huse, 1962;Meyer, 1956;Trankell, 1959). Holt (1958) found that using a combined technique of clinical and mechanical prediction was more effective than making a purely clinical prediction about a candidate.…”

“…The magnitude of the standardized coefficients for General Impression (.15-.16) was consistent with meta-analytic estimates of the IPA validity for nonmanagerial jobs (uncorrected r = .19; Morris et al, 2015). Although modest, the finding of incremental validity stands in contrast to past research that has failed to support incremental validity of assessors over the test battery (Holt, 1958;Huse, 1962;Meyer, 1956;Trankell, 1959).…”

“…Inaccuracies in clinical predictions could result from reliance on heuristic rules wherein assessors do not optimally use the available information (Camerer & Johnson, 1991;Garb, 2003). There has been limited empirical research on the incremental validity of assessor recommendations in IPA, with a few studies reporting validities as high as .77 (Meyer, 1956) or as low as -.05 (Miner, 1970), and studies failing to find incremental validity over the tests used in the assessment process (Holt, 1958;Huse, 1962;Meyer, 1956;Trankell, 1959). Empirical support for the use of individual psychological assessment is limited for a number of reasons, to include range restriction, criterion contamination, small sample size, unreliability of the predictor and criterion, and rater errors.…”

Stubborn Reliance on Intuition and Subjectivity in Employee Selection

“…The notion that analysis outperforms intuition in the prediction of human behavior is among the most well-established findings in the behavioral sciences (Grove & Meehl, 1994;Grove, Zald, Lebow, Snitz, & Nelson, 2000). 2 Why, therefore, does the intuitive Borneman, Cooper, Klieger, & Kuncel, 2007;Huse, 1962;Meyer, 1956).…”

“…2 2 Although few studies in I–O have explicitly made this comparison, there are a number of examples where tests alone outpredicted tests + intuition (e.g., Borneman, Cooper, Klieger, & Kuncel, 2007; Huse, 1962; Meyer, 1956). …”