Longitudinal assessment of applicant reactions to employment testing and test outcome feedback.

Abstract

Following a justice framework, the present study examined actual candidates taking selection tests to gain full-time employment. The reactions of 144 applicants for an entrylevel accounting job were examined in a real employment testing context at 3 time periods: before testing, after testing but before feedback on whether they passed or failed the test, and after test performance feedback. With controls for pretest perceptions, several of the 5 procedural justice measures (information known about the test, chance to perform, treatment at the test site, consistency of the test administration, and job relatedness) predicted applicant evaluations regarding the organization, perceptions of employment testing, and applicant test-taking self-efficacy. Test outcome favorability (passing or failing the employment test) predicted outcomes beyond initial reactions more consistently than procedural justice perceptions. Procedural justice perceptions explained incremental variance in some analyses after the influence of outcome favorability was controlled. The selection process is a two-way interaction where applicants and organizations gather information about one another and react to this information while making employment decisions. Written employment tests are frequently used to make such decisions. It is estimated that 15-20% of all organizations use written ability tests to help them select applicants (Rowe, Williams, & Day, 1994). Unfortunately, as Schmit and Ryan (1997) pointed out, more than a third of Americans seem to have unfavorable attitudes toward pre-employment testing. This may be because applicants do not believe that paper-and-pencil ability tests capture a person's true ability to do the job

Selection fairness information and applicant reactions: A longitudinal field study.

“…Distributive justice or outcome fairness refers to the fairness of outcomes or outcome favorability. Outcome favorability (e.g., pass or fail) is a key determinant of fairness (e.g., Bauer et al, 1998;Ployhart & Ryan, 1998), but process fairness is also important to applicant reactions (e.g., Bauer et al, 1998;Macan et al, 1994) and may interact with outcome favorability (Brockner, 2002;Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996). That is, although distributive justice is the primary determinant of fairness perceptions, procedural justice often shows incremental prediction of fairness after controlling for distributive justice.…”

“…Gilliland's (1993) model, which is based in organizational justice theory (e.g., Greenberg, 1990), has received the greatest research attention (e.g., Bauer, Maertz, Dolen, & Campion, 1998;Gilliland, 1994). The model suggests that applicant outcomes and the organization's adherence to fairness rules affect applicants' perceptions of the organization, the selection process, and themselves.…”

Sour grapes while you're down and out : self-serving bias and applicant attributions for test performance

“…First they suggest that when applicants receive information regarding outcome favorability, they will be more influenced by the outcome rather than the procedures used during the selection process. This effect was consistent with the findings of Bauer et al (1998), who found that the predictive power of procedural perceptions in explaining behavioral outcomes declined once the outcome was known by the applicant. This self-reported perceptions of the process and self-attitudes when measured at the same point in the process.…”

“…In other words, applicants who do not receive the job generally perceive the selection process as less fair than those who do receive the job. For example, Bauer et al (1998) found that outcome favorability predicted organizational attractiveness, intentions toward the organization and general perceptions of test fairness more consistently than procedural aspects of the selection system. Similarly, Self-Serving Bias 9 Ryan and Chan (1999) found that applicants who failed a licensure exam had more negative attitudes toward the test than those who failed it.…”

“…First, Chan and Schmitt (2004) note that almost no studies have examined changes in applicant reactions over time, and those that do (e.g., Bauer, Maertz, Dolen, & Campion, 1998;Ployhart & Ryan, 1997;Sanchez, Truxillo, & Bauer, 2000) generally use a pre-test / post-test design, measuring the same reaction at only two time points. Chan and Schmitt explicitly call for studies that measure reactions in a more longitudinal framework.…”