EEOC Proposed Rulemaking on ADEA

In an update courtesy of David Arnold, ATP General Counsel, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to address issues related to the United States Supreme Court's decision in Smith v. City of Jackson. The Court ruled that disparate impact claims are cognizable under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) but that liability is precluded when the impact is attributable to a reasonable factor other than age. Current EEOC regulations interpret the ADEA as prohibiting an employment practice that has a disparate impact on individuals within the protected age group unless it is justified as a business necessity. EEOC is proposing a change in rules to accommodate this Court ruling.
Read more!

On the International Front...

Those interested in global issues related to testing may want to take a look at the International Testing Commission website. Information about the organization and its goals are outlined as well as is information about ITC 2008 International Conference to be held July 14-16, 2008 in Liverpool, UK.

Also, Eric Shepherd, immediate Past Chair of the European Division of ATP (E-ATP) has created a wiki with information about the division and its goals. (For those not familiar, a wiki is a collaborative workspace that enables members to both comment and update a web site's content.)
Read more!

On Faking...

The issue of job candidates attempting to present themselves in a favorable light has long been of concern to those working in the area of personnel selection. The issue is quite complex from both a theoretical and practical perspective.

For example, a recent study in Human Performance looked at the efficacy of warning applicants about faking on a personality inventory. 464 participants completed personality instruments in either a “warned” or “unwarned” condition. While subjects in the warned condition had lower mean scores on some scales, it did not increase the convergent validity between self and other ratings.

In thinking about job candidates “faking good,” it is also important to remember that job seekers will may attempt to present themselves favorably in selection tasks beyond psychometric assessment. For example, Julia Levashina and Michael Campion have been exploring the role of faking in employment interviews. In a recent study, they report that over 90% of undergraduate job candidates admit to attempting to present themselves in a way that enhances their attractiveness to employers.

Another interesting finding is that follow-up questioning increases faking. They write:

We hypothesized the opposite effect by assuming that probing would be a response verification mechanism that would inhibit faking. Informal debriefing with participants revealed that follow-up questioning was perceived not as response verification but rather as a cue signaling what types of answers were important and critical.

Read more!

Thanks to All for a Successful Conference

Many thanks to all who attended the 2008 Conference in Dallas with special appreciation to those who presented as well as those who found time in their schedules to take part in the I-O Division Meeting. Conference presentations are now available on the Innovations in Testing website. Also, the 2009 ATP Conference will be held in Palm Springs, CA on February 22-25, 2009. The venue will be the Westin Mission Hills, location of the 2007 meeting.
Read more!