Mini book review: Groundswell

Did you know that by reading this blog post you've been put into a category? Yep, at the very least you're a "spectator." In fact, you might be a "joiner", a "collector", a "critic" or even (as I am) a "creator." Where am I getting these labels? They all come from Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff's new book, Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies.

This is by no means a new subject. There have been quite a few books in recent years that cover social technologies and how they can be used productively. But these books have tended to have either a more narrow focus (e.g., by focusing on particular technologies or organizational functions such as marketing) or an extremely broad focus. In Groundswell, Li and Bernoff, both VPs and analysts at Forrester Research, describe the current slate of social technologies and provide organizations with a road map of how they should (or shouldn't) be used.

Those of you familiar with Charlene's blog will recognize much of the content of the book--in fact to be honest there aren't a lot of new concepts in the book, which is a potential drawback. The book is, to a large extent, a collection of the various concepts that the authors have already published. But there's no denying that having it all in one place is mighty handy, and the in-depth case studies serve to flush out the details. And those of you that aren't avid readers of the blog will find much in here to digest.

So what is "the groundswell"? According to the authors it's "A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations."

These technologies include all the usual suspects, including blogs, wikis, social networks, forums, review sites, tags, RSS, widgets--you get the point. They also touch on newer technologies such as Twitter (which isn't so new anymore).

The biggest strength of the book lies in its description of two concepts:

- the social technographic ladder, a graphical description of various categories of technology participation. These are the categories I mentioned at the beginning of this post and it's how the authors suggest organizations stratify their customers to figure out what social technology will work best.

- POST, the authors' recommendation for how to plan to engage the groundswell. This deliberate, logical approach to using social technologies is the biggest takeaway from the book. It recognizes that not all technologies are appropriate for all organizations and provides users with a rational way of planning the strategic implementation of them.

On balance, the book is an easy read and provides a great mix of big picture considerations with real-world examples. Unless you're completely new to the subject it's not likely to rock your world, but if you're interested in using social technologies but aren't sure how, this is not a bad book to have.

What would improve the book? More specifics--details--on how exactly to use the technologies. Best practices for setting up a Facebook page, for example. The different blogging platforms and their pros and cons. It's not enough to understand the concept of the technology--you need to understand the technology itself.

So what does all this have to do with recruitment and assessment? Quite a bit actually, but mostly with the former (after all, check out where people spend their time). Tapping into social technologies is a great way to spread and monitor your employment brand--i..e, why should people want to work for you? It's also a great way to identify potential candidates and spread the word about opportunities. In terms of testing, we're not there yet (and won't be until we have a secure database of individual test scores). But maybe that's okay--after all you want a job-person match, not a person-test score match.

So why did I call this a mini-review? Because I haven't read the whole book (yet). I've read most of the beginning and latter chapters, but haven't made my way through the middle, which is comprised mostly of case studies. I don't claim to have read it cover-to-cover, so take this review with that in mind.

Content of the year

At the end of this, the first full year of this blog's existence, I decided to take a look back at 2007 and give you my Top 5 most popular posts of the year:

1. Jobfox plays matchmaker (there continues to be significant interest in Jobfox and their non-traditional approach to matching applicants with employers)

2. Reliability and validity--it's okay to Despair(.com). Whether it's the statistics words or Despair, I'll never know. But people sure like those little posters (and remember, you can make your own).

3. Personality testing basics (Part 2). As you can see from the sidebar survey, folks continue to be very interested in personality testing.

4. Wonderlic revises their cognitive ability test. Wonderlic, one of the oldest and most famous testing companies, continues to generate interest.

5. Checkster and SkillSurvey automate reference checking. There's further development to be had, but I do believe these tools could be a boon to HR and supervisors alike.

Okay, so enough about me. What about what everyone else is writing about? Here are my nominations for content of the year:

1. Morgeson et al. fired a shot across the bow of personality testing with their piece in Personnel Psychology that resulted in multiple, shall we say, not so thrilled responses. I don't know where this debate is going (although I suspect alternate measurement methods will play a part) but it sure is fun to watch!

2. There were some great books I came across this year. Particular props for Understanding statistics, Evidence-based management, and Personality and the fate of organizations. Yes, they were all published in 2006...are you saying I'm behind?

3. Dineen et al.'s great little piece of research on P-O fit and website design in the March issue of J.A.P. that I wrote about here. Take a look at your career website with these results in mind.

4. The Talent Unconference was a big success, and I'm very thankful that many of the presentations were videotaped; I put up links to some of them here

5. McDaniel et al.'s meta-analysis of situational judgment test instructions. Not only is this a great piece of research, it's (still) free!

So what about my New Years wish from last year? I'm still waiting. Although if people search databases like Spock eventually get up enough steam...perhaps I'll get my wish?

Here's to hoping 2008 is filled with interesting and useful things!

Winter '07 Personnel Psychology

Things are starting to heat up in the journal Personnel Psychology. The shot across the bow of personality testing that happened in the last issue of Personnel Psychology turns into a full-blown brawl in this issue. But first, let's not forget another article worth out attention...

First up, Berry, Sackett, and Landers revisit the issue of the correlation between interview and cognitive ability scores. Previous meta-analyses have found this value to be somewhere between .30 and .40. Using an updated data set, excluding samples in which interviewers likely had access to ability scores, and more accurately calculating range restriction, the authors calculate a corrected r of .29 based on the entire applicant pool. This correlation is even smaller when interview structure is high, when the interview is behavioral description rather than situational or composite, and job complexity is high. Why is this important? Because it impacts what other tests you might want to use--the authors point out that using their updated numbers they obtained a multiple correlation of .66 for a high structure interview combined with a cognitive ability test (using Schmidt & Hunters' methods and numbers). Pretty darn impressive.


Now that we have that under our belt, ready for the main event? As I said, in last issue Morgeson et al. came out quite strongly against the use of self-report personality tests in selection contexts--primarily because they claim the uncorrected criterion-related validity coefficients are so small. So it's not surprising that this edition contains two articles by personality researcher heavyweights defending their turf...

First, Tett & Christiansen raise several points; more than I have space for here. Some points include: considering conditions under which personality tests are used and validity coefficients aggregated; that there are occupational differences to consider; that coefficients found so far aren't as high as they could be if we used more sophisticated approaches like personality-oriented job analysis; and that coefficients increase when multiple trait measures are used. This sums their points up nicely: "Overall mean validity ignores situational specificity and can seriously underestimate validity possible under theoretically and professional prescribed conditions."

Second, Ones, Dilchert, Viswesvaran, and Judge come out swinging and make several arguments, including: conclusions should be based on corrected coefficients; coefficients are on par with other frequently used predictors, some of which are much more costly to develop (e.g., assessment centers, biodata); different combinations of Big 5 factors are optimal depending upon the occupation; and compound personality variables should be considered (e.g., integrity). Suggestions include developing more other-ratings instruments and investigating non-linear effects (hallelujah), dark side traits, and interactions. They sum up: "Any selection decision that does not take the key personality characteristics of job applicants into account would be deficient."

Not to be out-pulpited (yes, you can use that phrase), Morgeson et al. come back with a response to the above two articles, reiterating how correct they were the first time around. They state that much of what the authors of the above articles wrote was "tangential, if not irrelevant", that with respect to the ideas for increasing coefficients, "the cumulative data on these 'improvements' is not great", and that corrected Rs presented by Ones et al. aren't impressive when compared to other predictors. They point out some flaws of personality tests (applicants can find them confusing and offensive) but fail to mention that ability tests aren't everyone's favorite test either. They claim that job performance is the primary criterion we should be interested in (which IMHO is a bit short-sighted), and that corrections of coefficients are controversial.

So where are we? Honestly I think these fine folks are talking past each other in some respects. Some issues (e.g., adverse impact) don't even come up, while other issues (e.g., faking) are given way too much attention. It's difficult to compare the arguments side by side because each article is organized differently. It doesn't help that the people on both sides are some of the researchers with the most invested (and most to lose) by arguing their particular side.

I'm thinking what's needed here is an outside perspective. Here's my two cents: this isn't an easy issue. Criteria are never "objective." Job performance is not a singular construct. Job complexity has a huge impact on the appropriate selection device(s). And organizations are, frankly, not using cognitive or ability tests nearly as much as they are conducting interviews. So let's stop focusing on which type of test is "better" than the others. Frankly, that's cognitive laziness.

So is this just sound and fury, signifying nothing? No, because people are interested in personality testing. Hiring supervisors are convinced that it takes more than raw ability to do a job. We shouldn't ignore the issue. Instead we should be focusing on providing sound advice for practitioners and treating other researchers with respect and attention.

Should you use personality tests? I'll answer that question with more questions: what does the job analysis say? What does your applicant pool look like? What are your resources like? It's not something you want to use cookie-cutter, but not something you should write off completely.

Okay, I'm off my soap box. Last but not least there are some good book reviews in this issue. One is Bob Hogan's book (which I enjoyed immensely and actually finished which is rare for me), Personality and the Fate of Organizations, which the reviewer recommends; another is Alternative Validation Strategies, which the reviewer highly recommends; and the third for us is Recruiting, Interviewing, Selecting, & Orienting New Employees by Diane Arthur, which the reviewer...well...sort of recommends--for broad HR practitioners.

That's all folks!

Autumn 2007 Personnel Psychology

The Autumn 2007 issue of Personnel Psychology is out with plenty for us to sink our teeth into, particularly for you personality testing fans out there. Let's take a look:

First up, Luthans et al. present the results of a study that focuses on positive psychology, which is gaining more and more interest these days. The authors describe support for a survey instrument that purports to measure four aspects of "positive psychological capital"--hope, resilience, optimism, and efficacy--and then looked at whether results predicted job performance and satisfaction. Results? A "significant positive relationship", with the composite of the four aspects outperforming each individually. (Side note: two of the authors published a book last year that focuses on this topic)

Next, Judge & Erez look at how two of the Big 5 personality dimensions--emotional stability and extraversion--predicted job performance at a health and fitness center. Not only did both predict performance on their own, but they did even better in combination. The authors suggest that the combination of emotional stability and extraversion reflects a "happy" or "buoyant" personality that may be more important to predicting performance than each trait in isolation. Great study that goes beyond the "which of the Big 5 are the best" mentality.

Next up, Buckley et al. with a study of race and interview panels. Ten White and ten Black raters viewed videotaped responses of 36 White and 36 Black police officers applying for a promotion. Results? Well, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that there was a same race bias (i.e., White raters rated White applicants better, Black raters rated Black applicants better) and a significant difference between the panels depending on the ethnic makeup. Good news? The effect size was small and "net reconciliation" (the difference between initial and final scores) was significant (but small) only among Black raters.

Pay attention to the next study, recruiters: Zhao et al. present the results of a meta-analysis on the impact of psychological contract breach on 8 work-related outcomes, including attitude and individual effectiveness. An example of contract breach: telling an applicant you have great work-life balance policies and then never approving leave. So what did they find? Breach was related to all eight outcomes except for actual turnover. Affect mediated this relationship, which suggests to me that if you have to break a contract, you may be able to somewhat manage the impact by being smart about how you present it and being sensitive about the reaction.

Next up, a bevy of big names in the field (let's just call them "Morgeson, et al.") drop a bombshell on personality testing: they argue that because of the low validities associated with self-report personality measures, they should be discontinued for personnel selection! They don't write personality tests off completely, but suggest that alternatives to self-report measures need to be developed (someone may want to tell Judge & Erez; see article above). What might this look like? Conditional reasoning tests are mentioned as a possibility. And, (this is just me talkin') "ability" type measures could be developed (e.g., if you're conscientious you should be able to demonstrate certain behaviors) or we could integrate personality measurement into the reference checking process (hey, I didn't say it would be easy). Oh and hey, here's the article if you're interested; thanks to Dr. Morgeson for making so much of his work available.

Ironically (or is it coincidentally? curse you, Alanis Morissette), the very next article is about the development of a new self-report personality measure, the Five Factor Model Questionnaire. Gill & Hodgkinson criticize existing measures (e.g., they contain too many generic items, they use culture-specific language) and find support for their measure using five separate diverse samples, including close convergent and divergent validity with the NEO PI-R.

So that's the end of the research articles, but not the end of this journal issue. It also contains reviews of several books, including:

- Using individual assessments in the workplace: A practical guide for HR professionals, trainers, and managers by Goodstein and Prien (which looks to be a very useful introductory guide, along the lines of Aamodt et al.'s statistics book)

- Foundations of psychological testing: A practical approach (2nd ed.) by McIntire and Miller, which is designed for an undergraduate-level course.

- and for those of you looking for something a little more advanced, a review is also included of Dr. Viswanathan's Measurement error and research design.

Summer 2007 Personnel Psychology + free content

The Summer 2007 issue of Personnel Psychology (v. 60, #2) is here and it's got some good stuff, so let's jump right in!

First off is the aptly titled, A review of recent developments in integrity test research by Berry, Sackett, and Wiemann, the fifth in a series of articles on the topic. This is an extensive review of research on integrity tests since the last review, which was done in 1996. There's a lot here, so I'll just hit some of the many highlights:

- It appears that integrity tests can vary in their cognitive load depending on which facets are emphasized in the overall score.

- It is likely that aspects of the situation impact test scores (in addition to individual differences); more research is needed in this area.

- Although there have been no significant legal developments in this area since the last review, concerns have been raised over integrity tests being used to identify mental disorders. The authors do not seemed concerned, as these tests (e.g., Reid Report, Employee Reliability Index) were not designed for that purpose thus likely do not violate EEOC Guidelines.

- Research on subgroup scores (e.g., Ones & Viswesvaran, 1998) indicate no substantial differences on overt integrity tests; no research has addressed personality-based tests.

- Test-takers do not seem to have particularly positive reactions to integrity tests, although this appears to depend upon the type of test, items on the test, and response format.

Next, Raymond, Neustel, and Anderson investigate certification exams and whether re-taking the same exam or a parallel form results in different score increases. Using a sample of examinees taking ARRT certification exams in computed tomography (N=79) and radiography (N=765), the authors found no significant difference in score gains between the two types of tests, suggesting exam administrators may wish to re-think the importance of alternate forms for certification, particularly given the cost of development (estimated by the authors at between $50K and $150K). The authors do point out that the generalizability of these results is likely limited by test type and examinee characteristics.

Third, Henderson, Berry, and Matic investigate the usefulness of strength and endurance measures for predicting firefighter performance on physically demanding suppression and rescue tasks. Using a sample of 287 male and 19 female fire recruits hired by the city of Milwaukee, the authors found that both measures (particularly strength measures such as lat pull-down and bench press) predicted a variety of criteria, including a roof ladder placement exercise, axe chopping, and "combat" test. The authors suggest continued gathering of data to support the use of these types of tests (while acknowledging the ever-present gender differences), and discuss several problems with simulated suppression and rescue tasks, now used by many municipalities in light of previous legal challenges to pure strength and endurance measures.

Lastly, LeBreton, et al. discuss an alternate way of demonstrating the value of variables in I/O research. Traditionally researchers have focused on incremental validity, essentially the amount of "usefulness" that a variable adds to other variables already in the equation. (Allows you to do things like determine if a personality test would help you predict job performance above and beyond the test(s) you already use.) Instead, the authors present the idea of relative importance, which shifts the focus to the importance of each variable in the equation. Fascinating stuff (and far more than I can describe here), and something I'd like to see more of. I believe the authors are correct in stating it would be much easier to talk to managers about how useful each test in a battery is rather than the fact that overall they predict 35% of performance. The article includes a fascinating re-analysis of Mount, Witt, & Barricks' 2000 study of the use of biodata with clerical staff.

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This issue also includes reviews of several books, including the third edition of Ployhart, Schneider and Schmitt's Staffing Organizations (conclusion: good but not great), Weekley and Ployhart's Situational Judgment Tests (conclusion: good as long as you already know what you're doing), and Griffith and Peterson's A Closer Examination of Applicant Faking Behavior (conclusion: good for researchers, not so good for managers).

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But wait, there's more...the Spring 2007 issue, which had some interesting stuff as well, is free right now! So get those articles while you can. Hey, it's worth surfing over there just for McDaniel et al.'s meta-analysis of situational judgment tests!

Evidence-based recruitment and assessment

Recently I've been reading Pfeffer and Sutton's Hard facts, dangerous half-truths and total nonsense: Profiting from evidence-based management.

It's one of those business books that's both entertaining and enlightening. As you know, there is a LOT of "fluff" out there--this is not one of those books. The authors are all about using good data and experimentation to discover what really works, not just what sounds good or what someone else recommended.

Case in point: the "War for Talent." This phrase gained popularity in the late 90's through several employees of McKinsey Consulting and their book of the same name. Those authors argued that the best performing companies had a deep commitment (obsession?) with finding and promoting talented individuals and offered data that claimed to support a link between this mindset and firm performance. But as Pfeffer and Sutton point out, a closer look at the data raises some eyebrows. Specifically, talent management practices were measured AFTER performance measures, resulting in a classic case of correlation-causation confusion.

Certainly Pfeffer and Sutton aren't the only ones to raise concerns about a talent obsession, but they do so in a very accessible and thorough manner. They highlight three poor decisions practices that apply to talent management (as well as many other issues):

- Casual benchmarking (for example, the failure of "Shuttle by United" to copy Southwest Airline's success or U.S. automotive companies attempting to copy Toyota's success). We see this in our field when folks want to know "how other people are recruiting" or "what test everyone else is using." Good information to know, but look before you leap.

- Doing what (seems to have) worked in the past (for example, using incentive pay in your new organization because it seems to have worked at another one). The best example of this is interview questions by managers who just know their questions about favorite books and who they'd want on a deserted island work--even though they don't have any data to support their view. In my experience about 20% of managers are good interviewers (and I place a lot of the blame on HR).

- Following deeply held yet unexamined ideologies (for example, equity incentives, the so-called "first-mover advantage", and merit pay for teachers). In our area this includes things like believing applicant tracking systems always result in improvement, or that integrity tests are more discriminatory than other types of tests.

So how do we apply these lessons to recruitment and assessment? Here are just a few ways:

1. Be a critical thinker. We know we're supposed to eye HR metrics with some skepticism, but do we? Do we adopt "best practices" without thinking about how our organization might differ in important ways? Are we lured by shiny new pieces of technology without asking ourselves whether we might be better off without it? On the flip side, do we resist new ways of doing things without even considering the possibilities?

2. Know the evidence. HR is not guess work--we know a lot about what works and what doesn't. Every HR practitioner and manager should read Rynes, Brown, and Colbert's "Seven common misperceptions about human resource practices", with a more detailed analysis here.

3. Push back when you hear something that sounds too simple or too good to be true--it probably is. Two examples: behavioral interviewing does not solve all of our assessment problems, and social networking sites will not solve all our recruiting problems.

4. Model evidence-based decision making. Make it clear that you are making decisions based on the best data you could find/gather and that this is an expectation for everyone. Rather than rushing into a decision, take the extra time to gather whatever information you get your hands on--as long as it doesn't lead to paralysis by analysis.

5. Do experiments whenever possible. Include an assessment instrument as a research-only tool and see if it predicts performance. Try out different advertising methods and mediums and track applicant numbers and quality. Did you know Yahoo! typically runs about 20 experiments at any time, changing things like colors and the location of text? We can't all be Yahoo!, but we can all be experimenters.

Some of my favorite quotes from the book...

"If doctors practiced medicine the way many companies practice management, there would be far more sick and dead patients, and many more doctors would be in jail."

"The fundamental problem is that few companies, in their urge to copy--an urge often stimulated by consultants who, much as bees spread pollen across flowers, take ideas from one place to the next--ever ask the basic question of why something might enhance performance."

"Instead of being interested in what is new, we ought to be interested in what is true."

"There is really only one way around this reluctance to confront the hard facts, and that is to consciously and systematically understand the psychological propensity to want to both deliver and hear good news and to actively work against it."

New Whetzel & Wheaton Applied Measurement Book

Deborah Whetzel and George Wheaton's 1997 book, Applied measurement methods in industrial psychology was extremely dog-ear worthy, with wonderfully practical material by a variety of well-known authors on topics such as job analysis, interviews, low-fidelity simulations, and rating job performance.

Their updated volume, Applied measurement: Industrial psychology in human resource management, promises to be equally worthy of a place in your library. Dr. Whetzel presented an overview at last year's IPMAAC conference, and the book is due out tomorrow.

So what's inside? More great material by experts in our field. Here's a sample of content areas covered:

- Job analysis

- Measurement plans

- Cognitive ability

- Training & experience measures (new to this volume)

- Interviews

- Background data (biodata)

- Situational judgment tests

- Assessment centers (new)

- Performance measurement

- Test validation

- Developing legally defensible content valid selection procedures (new)

Price? All that for a very reasonable $39.95. I think I might have to pick one up!

Help with Sadist...er, Statistics

Just plowed through a new book that I think will be immensely helpful for folks in any of the following categories:

a) Don't understand statistics
b) Have never taken a statistics course
c) Think ANOVA is a new type of star
d) Find reading journal articles to be a unique brand of torture
e) Would like to go to an I/O or HR conference but don't speak "research"

The book is "Understanding statistics: A guide for I/O psychologists and human resource professionals" by Michael Aamodt, Michael Surrette, and David Cohen.

The purpose of the book, in the words of the authors, is "to provide students and human resource professionals with a brief guide to understanding the statistics they encounter in journal articles, technical reports, and conference presentations."

On the whole, the authors do an amazing job. Considering they use under 120 pages (and we're not talking dictionary font here), they cover a lot of ground, including:

- The basics, such as data types, measures of central tendency, and variability
- Sample size
- Standard scores
- Testing for differences between groups (e.g., t-tests, ANOVA, Chi-Square)
- Correlation and regression
- Meta-analysis
- Factor analysis

The language used throughout is mostly very easy to understand. The examples used are relevant and the authers make good use of humor when they can. The book focuses on how to interpret statistics rather than how to calculate them. Is there room for improvement? I think so, particularly in the ANOVA and regression sections, where it tends to get a little "stats speak." But overall this is a great primer for people who would like to (or need to) understand I/O and HR research.

One of the authors, Dr. Mike Aamodt, was kind enough to answer a few questions I had about the book:

BB: What inspired you to write this book? How do you hope it gets used?

MA: At IPMAAC meetings I noticed that many of the attendees were frustrated because they could not follow some of the statistics used in the presentations. So the inspiration for the book was to help HR professionals who don't have advanced degrees or lots of stat courses, feel comfortable listening to presentations or reading journal articles and technical reports. Our thinking was that, once you remove all the formulas and just concentrate on the meaning and use of statistics, it is not that scary.

We hope that the text will be used by HR professionals as well as by students. We think it would be a useful start to a stat class in which students would read our short text prior to reading a more in-depth text.

BB: How did you decide what topics to include? What got left out?

MA: Deciding what to include and omit was tough. We included the topics that seemed to be the most commonly used statistics in presentations and technical reports. Because the intended audience is "stat novices," we tried not to go too much in depth on any topic. Following such a plan was easier said than done, and we really had to resist the temptation to discuss everything about a topic. The book is only 120 pages and we thought that if it were much longer, we would lose the interest of the stat novice.

BB: Are there other texts you're planning on writing, or that you think should be written?

MA: I have several other texts I plan to write. I want to do a follow-up to the stat primer that gets into more detail but still omits formulas. I also plan to write a primer on conducting systemic compensation analyses, one on police selection, and one on employee selection in general. A book I think needs to be written is a practical, applied text on how to conduct a job analysis.

New Personnel Psychology--vol. 60, no. 1

March brings the Spring issue of Personnel Psychology and some great material to sink our teeth into.

Let's take a look at the articles relevant for recruitment and assessment (I'll summarize some of the other articles on my general HR blog).

The articles

First up, a study of --wait for it--personality tests. Well, integrity tests really. Using a sample of employees and students from Canada and Germany (thankfully moving beyond the U.S.), Marcus, Lee, and Ashton found that for the overt integrity tests investigated, honesty-humility (as described in the HEXACO model) accounts for more of the criterion-related validity than did the Big 5 dimensions of personality. For the personality-based integrity tests, the results were the opposite. The results were the same regardless of study group or instrument. Specific findings included correlations of -.51 and -.67 between an shortened version of the CPI and self-reported counterproductive work behavior and academic behavior, respectively.

Next, an excellent meta-analysis of situational judgment tests (SJTs) by McDaniel, Hartman, Whetzel, and Grubb. The authors continue the exploration of the difference between SJTs with knowledge instructions (e.g., "What would be the best...") and those with behavioral tendency instructions (e.g., "What would you do..."). The analysis found (as have previous studies) that SJTs with knowledge instructions had higher correlations with cognitive ability, while those with behavioral tendency instructions correlated more highly with personality constructs (Big 5). Criterion-related validity was unaffected by response instruction and was reported at .26 for both types--lower than had been previously reported due to analysis of new data. Results also showed SJTs have (modest) incremental validity over cognitive ability, Big 5, and a composite of the two. Given that previous studies have found larger racial differences with knowledge-based instructions I'm tempted to think this is an overall win for behavioral tendency instructions, but the situation is more complicated than that and most likely depends on the the job (e.g., complexity).

Last but not least, an article on test validity, bias, selection errors, and adverse impact by Aguinis and Smith (full text available here, many other of Aguinis' publications available here). The authors present a framework that integrates the four concepts and describe a computer program (available here) that allows individuals to input test and criterion distributions and analyze the impact on and relationship with selection ratios, adverse impact, and performance levels. Useful but definitely not a casual read.

The books

In addition to the studies listed above (and several others), this issue reviews several books that are worth looking into:

1) A critique of emotional intelligence: What are the problems and how can they be fixed? edited by Kevin Murphy. Intended to be a balanced analysis of this popular concept, the reviewer sees the book as more one-sided (providing fuel for critics). The book features chapters by prominent researchers and practitioners including Landy, Van Rooy, Hogan, and Spector.

2) Assessment centers in human resource management: Strategies for prediction, diagnosis, and development by George Thornton and Deborah Rupp. This one looked good enough that I ordered it--especially since I'm lacking a good book devoted to assessment centers. The reviewer states, "we have a new comprehensive description and expert review of the literature on the practice and evaluation of the assessment center method." I have Thornton's book on simulations which I find very useful.

3) Essentials of personnel assessment and selection by Robert Guion and Scott Highhouse. If I didn't already have Guion's larger tome, I'd probably get this one. The authors state the book is intended for undergraduate and master's level students, and the reviewer says "I believe that the book is just right for first or second year graduate students. It is a handy and compact compendium of fact and best practice."

That's it! As I said, there are other articles in here that I'll summarize in my other blog.