04 Terms to Remember
Assessment Centers: Comprehensive evaluation programs using multiple exercises, raters, and days to assess candidates for important positions.
Big Five: Personality model organizing traits into five major dimensions: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
Coefficient of Determination (r²): Percentage of variance in the criterion accounted for by the predictor.
Cognitive Ability: General mental capacity that predicts job performance across most jobs; typically the strongest single predictor available.
Computer Adaptive Testing (CAT): Technology that adjusts question difficulty based on previous responses to provide more precise measurement.
Concurrent Validity: Type of criterion-related validity where predictors and performance criteria are measured at the same time.
Conscientiousness: Big Five personality dimension that consistently predicts job performance across different types of work.
Construct Validity: The extent to which a test actually measures the psychological characteristic it claims to measure.
Content Validity: The degree to which a test covers all important aspects of what it purports to measure.
Criterion-Related Validity: The degree to which a predictor correlates with important job performance outcomes.
External Validity: Extent to which results obtained generalize to/across other people, settings, and times.
Face Validity: Whether the test looks like it is measuring what it is intended to measure.
Inter-rater Reliability: The degree to which multiple raters or judges agree when evaluating the same person or performance.
Internal Validity: Extent to which we can draw causal inferences about variables.
Measurement: Assignment of numbers to objects or events in such a way as to represent specified attributes of the objects.
Operational Definitions: The definition of a hypothetical construct in terms of the operations used to measure it.
Parallel Forms Reliability: Consistency between different versions of the same test measuring the same construct.
Personality Tests: Assessments measuring stable individual traits and behavioral tendencies across situations.
Predictive Validity: Type of criterion-related validity where predictors are measured before performance outcomes occur.
Reliability: Consistency or stability of measurement across time, raters, or different versions of the same test.
Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs): Assessments presenting work scenarios and asking candidates how they would respond.
Split-half Reliability: Internal consistency measure involving correlation between odd and even numbered test items.
Structured Interviews: Interviews using standardized, job-analysis-based questions asked consistently across candidates with systematic scoring.
Test: Any systematic way of observing behavior and turning it into numbers for prediction purposes.
Test-retest Reliability: Consistency of test scores when the same test is administered to the same people at different times.
Unstructured Interviews: Traditional interviews without standardized questions or systematic scoring procedures.
Validity: The accuracy of measurement; the extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure.
Validity Coefficients: Correlations between predictors and criteria in selection contexts.
WAIS (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale): Comprehensive, individually administered intelligence test providing detailed cognitive ability information.
Wonderlic Personnel Test: Brief cognitive ability assessment commonly used for employment screening.
Work Samples: Direct assessment of job-relevant tasks that closely mirror actual work activities and requirements.