Okay, I've got a lot of ground to cover this time, so buckle up...
Let's start with the December issue of IJSA:
- Looks like how much applicants try to make themselves look good varies by country
- Is applicant faking behavior related to job performance? Kinda depends on your definitions.
- Research has found that emotional intelligence can be related to work attitudes. This appears to be in part because of an increased situational judgment effectiveness.
- Speaking of situational judgment...in terms of job knowledge, knowing what to do is different than knowing what not to do
- What impact does a resume have on a recruiter? Depends on what assumptions they make about you after reading it.
- How to people select--and continue with--an executive coach? By looking at things like their ability to forge a partnership.
- How do Canadian firms do in terms of using tests other than interviews? Not so well, it turns out.
Let's move to the October issue of JASP, where there's just one article but it's a good one. Researchers continued the (depressing) finding that applicant names impact pre-interview impressions. Specifically, the more a name was Anglicized, the more favorable the impression was when hiring for an outside sales job.
Next comes the November issue of JAP:
- A new meta-analysis of the FFM of personality and its relationship to OCBs and task performance.
- Measures of interest haven't gotten a lot of love as selection devices. Looks like we need to tease out the constructs a little because they could be more helpful than we thought.
- Applicants trying to create a certain image during an interview are better off doing this after an initial flub or relying solely on self-promotion rather than making up an image.
A few from the November issue of JPSP:
- Another on impression management (not selection-specific) that goes into more detail about the topic (e.g., how many tactics people use, their accuracy)
- A caution about using the Revised NEO-PI in different cultures due to DIF.
Next, a call for more transparency in false-positive findings.
Last but not least, those of you interested in the potential of social ratings of performance being used for selection might be interested in this study of RateMyProfessors.com, which found student ratings are likely to be useful measures of teacher quality.
Showing posts with label Interests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interests. Show all posts
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
January, 2011 J.A.P.: Interests, trainability tests, interns, and personality tests
The January issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology is out with some great content, so let's jump right in.
First up, an intriguing study by Van Iddekinge, et al. on an interest inventory. Even though many suspect vocational interest plays a part in motivating work behavior, historically the published relationship between interest and job performance has not been strong. The authors of this study created a new measure of interest and using a decent sample size (418) found surprisingly high (corrected) correlation values between scores and various criteria, including job knowledge, job performance, and continuance intentions (mean R = .31). Scores also predicted additional variance beyond cognitive ability and measures of the Big 5 personality dimensions. Could we be on the cusp of a revolution in measures of interest? This could help bridge the gap between KSAs and discretionary effort.
Next, Roth et al. with an update on trainability tests--their predictive validity as well as Black-White score differences. As a refresher, trainability tests are a sub-category of work sample tests that involve a structured period of learning for applicants and are designed to measure how well they can learn a new skill. Previous (limited) research indicated they predict training performance fairly well but job performance less so, and this decreases over time. However, the authors of the current study show using data from a recent video-based trainability exam that the validity may be higher than we thought. Unfortunately it also showed a high level of mean differences between Black and White applicants, matching or exceeding that typically found for cognitive ability (which the test correlated highly with).
Did someone say personality testing? (no, but you knew it was coming) Le et al. are up next with an update on the curvilinear relationship between personality scores and job performance. Using two different samples, the authors found not only the hypothesized curvilinear relationship but that the inflection point (after which the relationship disappears) occurs later in jobs that are more complex--similar to the relationship between experience and performance. So for example, scores on Conscientiousness may correlate with job performance (and OCBs, and CWBs) for higher scores than, say, a retail clerk. Important for anyone making assumptions about what personality inventory scores imply.
Next up is your second personality test article, this time by Landers et al., who provide a warning about faking. The authors noticed a new trend in responses, which they label "blatant extreme responding" (BER; not listed as an X Games sport), indicated by answering all "1"s or "5"s on an inventory. They hypothesize that this is due to a coaching rumor, which seems to have been supported by the fact that internal retesters showed a higher prevalence of BER than the general sample. On the plus side, an interactive warning seems to have reduced the spread. Hard to tell if this is anything new, since we know faking does indeed occur--the debate is over its impact on validity.
Last but not least, Zhao and Liden write about internship programs and the impression management that occurs on the part of interns as well as the organizations. Not surprisingly, interns that wished to get hired by the organization were more likely to use self-promotion and ingratiation, which increased the likelihood of receiving a job offer. Perhaps more interesting is the finding that organizations wishing to hire the interns permanently exhibited more openness to creativity on the part of the interns, which in turn increased the likelihood that interns would apply. Lesson? If you have a good intern that you want to bring on full-time, solicit and be open to their suggestions.
First up, an intriguing study by Van Iddekinge, et al. on an interest inventory. Even though many suspect vocational interest plays a part in motivating work behavior, historically the published relationship between interest and job performance has not been strong. The authors of this study created a new measure of interest and using a decent sample size (418) found surprisingly high (corrected) correlation values between scores and various criteria, including job knowledge, job performance, and continuance intentions (mean R = .31). Scores also predicted additional variance beyond cognitive ability and measures of the Big 5 personality dimensions. Could we be on the cusp of a revolution in measures of interest? This could help bridge the gap between KSAs and discretionary effort.
Next, Roth et al. with an update on trainability tests--their predictive validity as well as Black-White score differences. As a refresher, trainability tests are a sub-category of work sample tests that involve a structured period of learning for applicants and are designed to measure how well they can learn a new skill. Previous (limited) research indicated they predict training performance fairly well but job performance less so, and this decreases over time. However, the authors of the current study show using data from a recent video-based trainability exam that the validity may be higher than we thought. Unfortunately it also showed a high level of mean differences between Black and White applicants, matching or exceeding that typically found for cognitive ability (which the test correlated highly with).
Did someone say personality testing? (no, but you knew it was coming) Le et al. are up next with an update on the curvilinear relationship between personality scores and job performance. Using two different samples, the authors found not only the hypothesized curvilinear relationship but that the inflection point (after which the relationship disappears) occurs later in jobs that are more complex--similar to the relationship between experience and performance. So for example, scores on Conscientiousness may correlate with job performance (and OCBs, and CWBs) for higher scores than, say, a retail clerk. Important for anyone making assumptions about what personality inventory scores imply.
Next up is your second personality test article, this time by Landers et al., who provide a warning about faking. The authors noticed a new trend in responses, which they label "blatant extreme responding" (BER; not listed as an X Games sport), indicated by answering all "1"s or "5"s on an inventory. They hypothesize that this is due to a coaching rumor, which seems to have been supported by the fact that internal retesters showed a higher prevalence of BER than the general sample. On the plus side, an interactive warning seems to have reduced the spread. Hard to tell if this is anything new, since we know faking does indeed occur--the debate is over its impact on validity.
Last but not least, Zhao and Liden write about internship programs and the impression management that occurs on the part of interns as well as the organizations. Not surprisingly, interns that wished to get hired by the organization were more likely to use self-promotion and ingratiation, which increased the likelihood of receiving a job offer. Perhaps more interesting is the finding that organizations wishing to hire the interns permanently exhibited more openness to creativity on the part of the interns, which in turn increased the likelihood that interns would apply. Lesson? If you have a good intern that you want to bring on full-time, solicit and be open to their suggestions.
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