Rob Tett and colleagues published a recent paper in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology that looked at personality test norms. Examining a large set of data from the Hogan Personality Inventory, they took the norms derived from several large samples of individuals employed in sales, trucking, clerical work, finance, and management. No big surprise, there were some rather significant differences in average scale elevation between groups (e.g., the truckers were substantially less sociable than the sales group). However, a bit unexpected were the differences in mean scores between samples within the same job family. As an illustration, some samples of sales personnel had much higher scores on scales measuring ambition and sociability than did others. Indeed, there were cases where the differences within job family were nearly as great as those between job families.

There are a handful of takeaway points to consider. First, relying solely on job type to select a normative sample can be problematic. Rather, factors such as organizational culture of the work group where the samples were obtained or whether the data were derived from job applicants vs. incumbents need to considered. (The latter is important because applicants tend to obtain higher scores than incumbents, something I will blog about in the near future.)  Secondly, this article also analyzed the impact of sample size on the reliability of normative samples. As a saving grace, they found that a sample of 100 is usually quite sufficient to develop a good set of local norms.

Finally, it should be noted that the importance of norms varies greatly depending upon how a test is being used. For example, if I want to know how the conscientiousness of the  maintenance personnel  in my company compares to that of folks who work in maintenance for other organizations, the normative sample chosen is obviously critical. However, if I am only interested in ranking maintenance job candidates on conscientiousness or have already conducted a validation study to determine cut scores, the use of norms isn’t particularly relevant or useful as we could use untransformed scores for these purposes.

Despite months of gloomy financial forecasts, the bright light at the end of the dark and dreary economic tunnel has consistently been that “things can only get better.”  Although no one knows when, we all know that things will start to improve eventually.  Organizations need to be ready for this economic turnaround so that they can ultimately prevail in the talent war that will most certainly arise.  To obtain the best and the brightest, as well as retain existing talent, they will have to become creative in offering up various incentives.  

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), for example, has already initiated activity to enrich the array of work/life balance program that are currently offered.  For starters, they have begun surveying existing federal workforce employees to determine which programs will be most beneficial to them in the future.  In addition to more traditional offerings such as child care centers, they are considering adult care centers to provide coverage for the aging parents of today’s workforce.

For organizations that currently have few if any work/life balance programs in place, they need not be intimidated by the prospect of raising the necessary funds to implement them from scratch.  Following the lead of several federal agencies, private organizations may be well-served to consider partnering with other organizations to capitalize on sharing existing benefits.  For instance, an organization that already has an in-house fitness center could consider offering access to the employees of another organization in exchange for a benefit that they currently provide (e.g., in-house daycare).  Alternatively, an organization in need of benefits such as fitness center access could offer to contribute funds to hire additional staff or to expand the size of the facility so that their employees could jointly utilize the center.

In sum, as the hiring cycle begins to pick back up and candidates have more and more employment options from which to choose, organizations are going to have to present prospective employees with work-life balance options that “sweeten the employment offer” if they intend to remain viable and emerge from this recession potentially stronger than before.

Lori Ferzandi

For the past several years, there has been substantial debate about the impact of “faking good” (or socially desirable responding) on personality tests. While clients sometimes want to know how a particular test adjusts for an individual’s portraying him or herself in an overly positive fashion, there are no easy answers to this seemingly simple question.

First, there is disagreement as to whether socially desirable responding even has a significant impact upon the validity of most assessments when they used to actually select employees. Second, there is the argument that it is expected for job seekers to present themselves in a favorable light (e.g., “putting your best foot forward”) and that one should be concerned about an applicant who isn’t either willing or able to do this. Thirdly, when assessments are developed based on data samples of job seekers, this positive self presentation bias is already “baked into” the norms. Finally, as a practical matter, it has been quite difficult to find accurate measures of “faking good,” let alone ones that are helpful in increasing the validity of a test.

A recent Personnel Psychology article by Nathan Kuncle and Auke Tellegen helps shed some light on this. In their research on a scale designed to measure socially desirable responding, they found that increasingly elevated scores on a favorable personality trait are not necessarily seen as being more desirable. For example, moderate levels of “being organized” are typically seen more favorably than either very low or very high levels of this behavior. Additionally, when subjects are instructed to respond favorably on a scale designed to assess "faking good,” they tend to endorse these items at moderate, not extreme, levels.  As a result, the authors argue that measures of socially desirable responding need to consider the desirability of each response alternative and not simply look at the overall score on the scale.

Reid Klion

It seems that the media has had a lot to say recently about going “green.”  Undoubtedly, the current administration appears dedicated to improving the current legal standards governing environmental safety.  Many scientists also argue that we must take action now in order to avoid the nasty consequences of global climate change.

A recent article in the New York Times focuses on a potentially positive effect of our nation’s increasing “greenness” – the creation of new industries and jobs. It’s true that “green” jobs are likely to increase as we seek to lower emissions, gain energy independence, and clean up our water, earth, and air. However, some experts say it is unlikely that these jobs will be enough to replace those that we will lose from more traditional industries. For instance, if we enact carbon and energy restrictions, we risk losing jobs in the coal and oil industries as well as in manufacturing. In addition, “green” industries may well face the same foreign competition for jobs and other challenges as their predecessors.

Despite the new economic and industrial waters we are charting, our challenges remain the same. We must create jobs that benefit the individual – our economy, our culture – as well as the whole – the global economy, the environment, and the well-being of all people inside and outside our borders. Although it is interesting to consider how industries and jobs will change in relation to the threat of global warming, it is more important to keep our eyes on the prize of stabilizing the U.S. economy, creating jobs to lower unemployment, and pulling out of the current recession.

Jocelyn Courtney-Hays

While it had been brewing in the professional literature for the past three years or so, the dispute between the authors of the MMPI has become public. (The MMPI is the pre-eminent clinical assessment that has been used for over 70 years. While sometimes discussed mistakenly in relation to pre-employment testing, it is almost never used to select employees because it is a clinical, not a work-related, assessment. About the only times that it is used to hire employees is in occupations where it is critical to rule out significant psychopathology such as police or nuclear plant operators.)

The issue at hand has to do with a “reformulated” version of MMPI-2, the MMPI-2-RF. The “RF” version, which has just been published, is shorter and described as easier to interpret that its predecessor. However, James Butcher, the lead author of the earlier MMPI-2 is highly critical of this revision. The issue has become personal because the authors of the “RF” version (Auke Tellegen and Yossef Ben-Porath) had been long-time colleagues and collaborators with Butcher. The result has been charges of conflict of interest and mismanagement on the part of the University of Minnesota press which owns the MMPI.

Reid Klion

Coping with stressful situations in the workplace can be a challenge for us all. While the role of exercise in managing stress are well understood, I was intrigued by a recent study by the Center for Creative Leadership that identified an additional benefit of exercise—leadership effectiveness. In a rather unique approach, researchers took a sample of 360º multi-rater feedback data and compared the results of those leaders who exercise and those who don’t. They found that the exercisers were rated higher than non-exercisers on their overall level of leadership effectiveness. Those who exercised also scored higher on behaviors including inspiring commitment, credibility, leading others by example, energy, calmness and resilience. While starting a workout program won’t necessarily lead to a direct improvement in leadership skills, the importance of exercise in maintaining a healthy lifestyle and increasing overall effectiveness at work can’t be minimized.

Reid Klion

One topic that has been controversial in the assessment literature is non-proctored assessment—that is, having job candidates complete tests without supervision. I blogged  about it previously and a seeming plethora of conference presentations and articles have addressed the topic. A consensus seems to be emerging that unsupervised testing may be appropriate in a particular situation based upon a careful risk-benefit-analysis that involves consideration of a variety of factors including overall business strategy, type of test, how the results will be used, and the candidate population.

A similar sort of cost-benefit analysis seems to have taken place in the federal prison system when transferring inmates from facility to facility. Since the early 1990s, prisoners who are considered low risk are apparently given a one-way bus tickets and sent on their way without supervision. Nearly 90,000 prisoners have been transferred in this fashion since 2006, and fewer than 1 in 500 have failed to make it to their intended destination. Given the expense that would be associated with escorting the prisoners, and the fact that a large proportion of these felons are on their way to a halfway house where they will have substantial freedom to move about the community, federal prison officials seemed pleased with the system. Others, including Greyhound officials and local law enforcement authorities where these prisoners have absconded, take a somewhat differing position.

Reid Klion

With its original version dating back to 1925, the Watson Glaser is a well-known critical thinking exam. Critical thinking exams are designed to measure an individual’s ability to evaluate the evidence in support of an assertion, to engage in abstract thinking, and to come to logically accurate conclusions.

As might be expected, scores on the Watson Glaser are highly correlated with other assessments of verbal, non-verbal, and numerical reasoning. The Watson Glaser also predicts job performance and leadership ability since critical thinking is closely associated with success in higher level positions.

The Watson Glaser is often used as part of a pre-employment testing process because of its ability to predict work performance in positions which require decision making. However, with the advent of the Watson Glaser II (which will soon be available on pan), there is now a developmental report which will broaden the Watson Glaser’s  use beyond pre-employment testing to coaching, training, and other related domains.

An uproar has been brewing because the images used for the Rorschach inkblot test been posted on Wikipedia along some of the more common responses to each. . As might be expected, some psychologists are concerned that this may impact the validity of the test, especially in cases where the assessment is used within a legal context (for example, in a child custody evaluation or pre-trial assessment of a sex offender) as opposed to a counseling situation. In contrast, others have pointed out that the Rorschach is almost never used in isolation but in combination with a number of other clinical assessment tools to make decisions and that this same information about the Rorschach is available in training texts on the test as well as from other sources.

However, this event does highlight an important issue about test security and the Internet. While these images have been available to the public previously, their posting on Wikipedia does make  them easily and broadly accessible. And even if we accept the argument that posting this information will have little impact upon the Rorschach’s validity, it should be noted that real harm can be done when test security is compromised. Not only is copyright law often being violated and the validity of a test compromised that may have taken years to develop, but the public may be placed at harm. For example, how many of us would be concerned we found out that our child’s pediatrician only passed a licensing exam because he or she had knowledge of the test content before taking the licensing exam?

As it turns out, the individual who posted the images actually is an emergency room doctor from Saskatchewan. When questioned, he sees little harm in what he has done and goes on to state that his elderly father passed a driver’s license eye exam by looking it up on the Internet. I guess our only hope is that his dad can actually see well enough to drive to keep both himself and the rest of us safe.

Reid Klion

The need to identify individuals who will be successful in a sales role is one of the most frequent problems that employers face. One assessment in the pan catalog that is designed specifically for this purpose is the Sales Achievement Predictor. Published by WPS, the Sales Achievement Predictor was specifically developed to measure traits that are associated with success in a sales-related position. This assessment helps a potential employer to understand a candidate’s relative strengths and weaknesses. The Sales Achievement Predictor also looks at factors such as self-confidence, willingness to make “cold calls,” motivation, and assertiveness.

pan also offers a number of other sales personality tests in addition to the Sales Achievement Predictor to include the Hogrefe PASAT 2000 and the Troutwine Career Automotive Retailing Scale. While also looking at personality factors related to a role in sales, the gNeil Sales Potential Inventory  is a bit closer to being a sales skills test because it also looks at behaviors related to the sales role.