New issue of IJSA--vol. 15, #1

The March journal madness continues with the latest issue of the International Journal of Selection and Assessment.

There's quite a lot in this issue (and plenty for you personality testing junkies), so let's take a look at some of the articles...

The main section

1. Hulsheger and colleagues report a meta-analysis of the operational validity of cognitive ability (general mental ability, g, whatever ya wanna call it) in Germany. After analyzing data from 54 articles and reports, the authors report a population correlation of .467 with training success and .534 with job performance. Interestingly (and counter to other research I've seen), they found the relationship was higher for low-complexity jobs.

2. Next, a study of situational judgment tests (SJTs) by O'Connell and colleagues. Using data from seven U.S. manufacturing companies (total N of around 1,000), the authors had findings in three areas. First,they found a mean Black-White difference on the SJT of .38 and a gender difference of -.27 (favoring females). Second, for task performance they found that the SJT added incremental validity to a cognitive ability test or a personality test, but not if both were already being used. Last, for contextual performance, they found the SJT added validity only if a cognitive ability test was being used as the sole instrument. Good stuff, and kudos as always to Dr. Michael McDaniel for making this (and other articles) available through his website.

3. Next up, a very interesting concurrent study of 154 customer service employees from DeGroot and Kluemper. Why very interesting? Because they looked at the impact of "vocal attractiveness." Results? Vocal attractiveness correlated with both situational interview scores and job performance. AND, two Big 5 factors (agreeableness and conscientiousness) predicted performance more strongly for people with more attractive voices. Interesting! I knew all those vocal lessons would pay off.

Let's see...what else looks good...

4. How about another concurrent study of person-organization (P-O) fit? McCulloch and Turban looked at the incremental validity of a measure of P-O fit, defined as the match between managers' description of the work culture with incumbent work preferences. Results? The measure added significant incremental variance over a cognitive ability measure in terms of predicting turnover (important given the historically high levels for these jobs) but was not related to job performance. A great illustration (along with #2 above) of the importance of the criteria being studied.

5. A study of Hartman's Color Code Personality Profile by Ault and Barney. If you don't know much about this test (I didn't), it classifies people into four colors--Red (motive: power), Blue (intimacy), White (peace), and Yellow (fun). Anyhoo, the authors state this is the first psychometric research on the highly popular instrument (don't even get me started), and found "high" test-retest reliability and support for the instrument measuring "some" personality traits. They note, however, that the instrument has high error variance and suggest caution when using it at the individual level. This is one of those studies you'll want to have in your back pocket when someone comes up to you and says, "Hey, I read about this cool personality test on my flight. Let's use that from now on."

Speaking of personality testing...

This issue has a special section on personality. Let's see what we've got:

6. A study that looks into response distortion on personality tests. Berry, Page, and Sackett found support among a sample of 261 managers for enhanced prediction of job performance when self-deceptive enhancements (SDE) were accounted for, but not impression management (IM) scores. Why is this important? Because most research on "faking" personality tests has looked at IM--intentionally inflating your scores to score better on the test. SDE, on the other hand, happens when you honestly believe you are greater than you are. I think I need this article.

7. The brain stimulation continues with a meta-analysis by Connolly, Kavanagh, and Viswesvaran. The authors were looking at the relationship between self-ratings and observer-ratings of Big 5 personality dimensions. Results? Correlations in the .5-.6 range, suggesting each contributes substantial unique variance. Oh yes, and duration of acquaintance had a large moderating effect, but source of observer ratings did not. I may need this one too.

8. Last but not least (yeah, I skipped a couple, but I know your e-mail Inbox is filling up as we speak), Smithikrai found, in a sample of 2,518 Thais employed in seven different occupations, that the Big 5 factor of neuroticism was significantly negatively correlated with job success across the board, while extraversion and conscientiousness showed significant positive correlations. Conscientiousness was the only trait to predict success across occupations (sounds familiar!).

That's all folks! Enjoy your weekends!