Selection and Classification Tests Foe Women: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

The purpose of this review of the literature was to examine the appropriateness of using with women the same selection and classification procedures that are used with men in situations in which both men and women are selected for the same jobs. Particular attention was paid to reports of the selection of women for jobs similar to billets in the U. S. Navy.Two valuable sources of information on women which included comparable data for men were U. S. Air Force reports of the selection of personnel for Air Force technical schools and British reports of the selection of women for the Auxiliary Territorial Service during World War II.Most industrial studies were based on samples of one sex. It became apparent that in normal times most civilian jobs are held predominantly by members of one sex or the other, and hence the practical problem of the influence of sex differences on predictive measures has not been investigated to any extent by those who are conducting personnel research in industry.The findings tend to support the assumption that tests developed and used for the selection of men must be carefully examined prior to their use in selecting women for the same jobs. This seems particularly true for tests in mechanical and computational areas. In general, findings seem to indicate that a given tests score may not predict the same level of on‐the‐job performance for a woman as for a man, there being evidence that women do better than would be predicted from scores based on tests and procedures developed for men.