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.
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EEOC Proposed Rulemaking on ADEA
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.)
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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.
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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.
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Interesting Read on Assessing Leaders and Leadership
Rob Kaiser, Bob Hogan and Craig Bartholomew have just published a provocative article entitled "Leadership and the fate of organizations" in the February-March 2008 issue of American Psychologist. One of their main arguments is that while the quality of leadership is a critical factor in shaping the success of an organization, most of the literature focuses upon the trajectory of a leader's career as opposed to the sucesss that he or she may experience in actually leading individuals, teams, and organizations.
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Steven Hunt Responds to Morgeson et al.
As might be expected, the original Morgeson et al. article has stirred quite a bit of interest. Due to limited space, Personnel Psychology was only able to print a limited number of responses. Steve Hunt of SuccessFactors also wrote an interesting reaction entitled Commentary on “Reconsidering the Use of Personality Tests in Personnel Selection Contexts”: Thoughts from a Practitioner Perspective that he was kind enough to permit us to post.
As space permits, we would also be interested in posting papers written by others on this as well as other topics that would be of interest to either the I-O Division or the larger I-O community. If you have something that you would like to share, please send it our way.
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I-O Division Input on Revised Testing Standards
As all are likely aware, the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing are currently being revised. The ATP I-O Division has created a Task Force of volunteer members to provide input from both a publisher and professional perspective. The Task Force, chaired by Joseph Orban, will present on its findings at the upcoming ATP Conference during a session scheduled for Tuesday, March 4 @ 1:30 to 2:30 PM in the Ft. Worth 5 Room) Additionally, SIOP has posted the comments of its Task Force.
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