Personnel Selection

Abstract

The field of personnel selection has received a great deal of attention in the 3-year period covered by this review-January 1, 19681, , through Decem ber 31, 1970 In some respects it has been a period of discovery-the recent discovery, as noted by Campbell (30), of minority and disadvantaged groups has undoubtedly changed the complexion of the field. The specter of per sonnel selection by civil legislation has evoked considerable interest by parties both within and outside the profession. This in many ways has served as an impetus not only to discover new techniques but also to critically examine current practices concerning the full utilization of the disadvantaged, blacks, women, the elderly, and other special groups.At the same time, so me serious questions have been raised concerning personnel research strategies. A highly simplified, but rather typical, per sonnel selection research strategy frequently follows this format: Give job applicants an aptitude test of some sort, hire some of them, get ratings of job performance, correlate test scores with performance ratings, add more tests, use elaborate statistical methods, hopefully arriving at a degree of prediction which, in light of the selection ratio, is of some practical useful ness. The adequacy of this model, although vastly superior to the still all too common buy test-use test-no research approach, has in the past 3 years been questioned increasingly. The forces influencing the model in the direc tion of greater sophistication were already apparent in 1969, or even before, as noted by Owens & Jewell (155). They have intensified in the intervening years.Perhaps chief among these forces was the pressure, legal and otherwise, for fair employment practices. The demand for unbiased selection methods focused on testing and consequently placed personnel psychologists in an unaccusto med limelight. Such attention proved to be embarrassing, not only because testers had ignored minority groups but, as importantly, because the quality of research done even on the majority group left much to be de sired.Faced with renewed interest and pressures regarding selection practices, the general tenor of response has been disappointing. To some extent the 1 The helpful contrib utions of James R. Huck are gratefully acknowledged. , Articles appearing before and after this period are included where they pro vide continuity. 545 189 Annu. Rev. Psychol. 1972.23:545-576. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Access provided by University of California -San Francisco UCSF on 02/03/15. For personal use only. Quick links to online content Further ANNUAL REVIEWS

DETERMINING THE EXISTENCE OF UNFAIR TEST DISCRIMINATION FOR FEMALE CLERICAL WORKERS1

“…When more objective criterion are used, subgroup differences in validity do not appear as frequently. Bray and Moses (1972) maker a similar observation.…”

The attitudes and opinions of australian personnel management toward the contribution of industrial psychologists to human resource management

“…As Bray and Moses (1972) have noted, "test using organizations in the United States must demonstrate that any testing procedure for personnel selection purposes must provide equal employment opportunity for minority groups" (Bossley et al, 1980). If such legislation is introduced into Australia it will serve (as it has in America) as a stimulus to develop new non-psychometric selection techniques.…”

Selective Decisions: Challenging Orthodox Analyses of the Hiring Process

“…The controversy surrounding cognitive ability testing was sparked by the US Civil Rights Act of 1964, but continues to inflame deep divisions between personnel specialists (for an example, see papers and comments on Nassau County Police Study, 1997). The 1964 Act led to sanctions against employers who used tests for selection decision making which had an adverse effect on the employment of minority groups (Bray and Moses, 1972). Subsequent equal employment opportunity legislation and case law in the US placed the search for unbiased and reliable prediction of performance for specific jobs at the forefront of employers' hiring concerns.…”