Research time

Some interesting studies out there...

This study in Personnel Psychology (which I get) found evidence that "opportunity to perform" (essentially, were you allowed to strut your stuff in the selection process) is strongly related to fairness perceptions--which as we know is correlated with a bunch of important things, include acceptance intentions, likelihood to sue, etc.

Lots of good stuff in the International Journal of Selection and Assessment. This one reinforces the "be careful what you ask for" rule when developing interviews. Peeters and Lievens found that behavioral descriptions ("tell us about a time when...") triggered responses that differed in focus from situational questions ("what would you do if..."). BTW, Lievens, a professor at Ghent University in Belgium, is not only prolific but generous with his publications.

Another one in IJSA goes into detail about how to score situational judgment tests (SJTs). (For those of you new to this stuff, SJTs are items that ask the applicant to respond to "What would you do if..." from a set of preestablished answers)

What about Journal of Applied Psychology? This one reminds us that unfortunately things (in this case, apparent gender bias) get in the way of accurate performance evaluations (and, by extension, reference checks).

Here's one that we should all read. It's a meta-analysis (essentially, a study of studies) looking at person-organization (P-O) fit measures. Looks like pretty low predictive validity.

This one looks at the relationship between media richness and credibility, and the correspondence between how job seekers view an organization's image and the image the organization is trying to project. Can't say just from looking at the abstract what the practical suggestions are.

Last but not least, this study of black-white score differences on Raven's Progressive Matrices (a type of cognitive ability test) reminds us how important instructions are.

Have a great labor day!