Individual Differences and Assessment

Individual Differences: Cognitive ability, physical ability, personality, interests, knowledge, and emotion

Human attributes (remain even after training)

Cognitive Ability: The "g" (general mental ability) factor/IQ

Predictive power increases with job complexity

Specific facets

Measuring "g" alone may not be sufficient or defensible

Physical abilities: Muscular strength, cardiovascular endurance, movement quality

Sensory abilities: Five senses

Psychomotor abilities: Coordination, dexterity, reaction time

The Five Factor Model (Others): OCEAN

Incremental predictability of work performance over "g"

Can predict other outcomes (CWB, OCB, turnover, job satisfaction)

Fewer sub-group differences

Knowledge

Declarative (knowing that) vs procedural knowledge (knowing how)

Tacit knowledge: Action-oriented, goal-directed knowledge informally acquired

Skills (develop through practice): Task vs people skills

Competencies: General and desirable attributes identified by an organisation (sets of behaviours that are instrumental in the delivery of desired results or outcomes)

A top-down process using organisational core values to derive a set of competencies

Assessment: Objective and standardised procedure for measuring a psychological construct using a sample of behaviour

Tests

Valid tests

Construct validity: Do the constructs measure what they are supposed to measure?

Content validity: Does the test have sufficient coverage of the construct?

Criteria-related validity: Predictive ability

Reliability: Consistency across different times and different test versions

Use generalised and effective tests as they are cost effective

Issues

  1. Bias: Does the test result in errors of prediction for a subgroup?
  2. Fairness: A value judgement about actions or decisions based on test scores. The test can be unbiased, but the results can be unfair.
  3. Culture: Can the test be perceived equally across different cultures?

Ability tests

Cognitive ability tests

IQ tests

Verbal and numerical ability

Wonderlic Personnel Test/Wonderlic Select: Commercial test measuring general mental ability for job candidates

Good criterion-related validity (Pearson's r/correlation coefficient)

Critique: Low job relevance

Spatial relations

Motor and sensory tests: Finger dexterity (Perdue pegboard dexterity test), vision, hearing

Knowledge/skills tests

Job knowledge test

Work sample test: Involves abstracting a portion of the work done in the job and testing the participants on it

High fidelity and direct relevance to the job

Others tests

Situational judgement test: Scenario-based questions probing judgement (scenario and choose best response from options). Assessing job-related knowledge, as well as tacit knowledge and practical intelligence

Predicts task performance over intelligence, personality tests, and job experience

Predicts adaptive performance, CWB, OCB

Smaller sub-group difference

Personality tests: Matching psychological attributes with those successful performers in the same position

For both screening-in and screening-out (filtering out candidates)

Faking

  1. People can have different personalities in different contexts
  2. Incorporate lie scales in the tests
  3. Always cross-checked with other assessments

Integrity tests

Over measures: Attitudes toward theft and self-report theft

Personality-based measures: Linked to Big-5 (e.g. thrill-seeking, hostility, etc.)

Components:

  1. Antisocial behaviour
  2. Socialisation (e.g. emotional stability)
  3. Positive outlook (e.g. follow hostility norms)
  4. Orderliness

Interviews: Must be structured (emphasise on ratings)

Advantages: More favourable perception from applicants, place for QnA, negotiation of terms

Assessment center: Assessment activities

Multi-trait-multi-approach-multi-assessor method:

  1. Multiple dimensions identified by job analysis
  2. Multiple exercises
  3. Panel of assessors
  4. Assessment done in groups

Activities: Structure interview, simulation/situational exercises, testing

Written materials (provided by applicants)

Weighted application blanks: Assigning points to information given on an application form (needs checking)

Grades: Minimum qualifications, but weak correlation with cognitive ability

Letters of recommendation: Positive distortion is common

Biodata: Biographical information, but possible social desirability effect

Predictive validity above entrance exam scores and personality scores, smaller racial subgroup differences

Predicting power

Cognitive ability test is best single predictor of performance

Incremental validity: Combining multiple tests to yield a higher validity than a single existing test

Carroll's three layers to intelligence:

  1. "g"
  2. Fluid intelligence, crystallised intelligence, memory, visual perception, auditory perception, information retrieval, cognitive speed
  3. Abilities tied to the above 7 broad abilities

Critique:

  1. 5 factors too few to capture full personality
  2. Conscientiousness correlated with a lot of work behaviours, but not highly correlated
  3. Combinations led to higher predictive power than single factors

Functional personality at work: A combination of the big-5 (the way an individual behaves at work)

Moderated by employee autonomy

Norming: Assigning meaning to tests scores

Categories

Speed (easy but time crunch) vs Power (difficult but no time crunch)

Speed has greater variability (more effective prediction) but have disadvantages:

  1. Is it relevant to the job?
  2. Introducing unfairness by emphasising speed (e.g. aging, disabilities) --> legal issues

Individual (test given on individual basis) vs Group (test administered to large group of people)

Paper-and-pencil (requires no manipulation) vs Performance (Individual has to manipulate equipment or objects)

Situational interviews: Describe in detail how they would respond in a particular situation

Behaviour description interview: What they did in the past

Ecology model: Underlying model for life history biodata instruments. Proposes that the events that make up a person's history represent choices made by the individual to interact with his or her environment. These choices can signal abilities, interests, and personality characteristics.