The Ottawa Paramedic Physical Ability Test (OPPAT) was launched in Ontario as a physical employment standard for front-line paramedics. When considering pass rates based on sex, males had a higher ...likelihood of passing than females. To help understand how to improve pass rates among females we aimed to understand if factors such as participant demographics, college type, employment status and/or peak heart rate (a surrogate of fitness level) were related to OPPAT pass rates. Females who were employed, who were educated in a public paramedic college, and who had higher body mass were more likely to successfully complete the OPPAT. Those educated in a public paramedic college were more than twice as likely to pass relative to those educated in a private college program. This may underscore a need to further explore different modes of paramedic education to understand why public college program trained students are more likely to pass.
To quantify the cost benefits associated with Post-Offer Employment Testing (POET).
Cross-sectional analysis of 5 million individuals/480 million medical, prescription, absence, short- and long-term ...disability, property and casualty and workers' compensation claims. Individuals who received POET were statistically matched by company, position, age, and gender to candidates who did not.
Significant injury reduction rates and integrated benefits cost savings were found in the cohort screened by POET.
POET is an effective tool for the employer to manage health, disability, motor vehicle crash, at-work injury costs, and reduce turnover.
The authors review criticisms commonly leveled against cognitively loaded tests used for employment and higher education admissions decisions, with a focus on large-scale databases and meta-analytic ...evidence. They conclude that (a) tests of developed abilities are generally valid for their intended uses in predicting a wide variety of aspects of short-term and long-term academic and job performance, (b) validity is not an artifact of socioeconomic status, (c) coaching is not a major determinant of test performance, (d) tests do not generally exhibit bias by underpredicting the performance of minority group members, and (e) test-taking motivational mechanisms are not major determinants of test performance in these high-stakes settings.
Introducing valid physical employment tests requires identifying and developing a small number of practical tests that provide broad coverage of physical performance across the full range of job ...tasks. This study investigated discrete lifting performance across various platform heights reflective of common military lifting tasks. Sixteen Australian Army personnel performed a discrete lifting assessment to maximal lifting capacity (MLC) and maximal acceptable weight of lift (MAWL) at four platform heights between 1.30 and 1.70 m. There were strong correlations between platform height and normalised lifting performance for MLC (R
2
= 0.76 ± 0.18, p < 0.05) and MAWL (R
2
= 0.73 ± 0.21, p < 0.05). The developed relationship allowed prediction of lifting capacity at one platform height based on lifting capacity at any of the three other heights, with a standard error of < 4.5 kg and < 2.0 kg for MLC and MAWL, respectively.
Practitioner Summary: Physical employment tests must be both practical and reflective of job task demands. This study illustrates the potential for the implementation of a single discrete lifting assessment to predict performance across numerous occupational lifting heights.
Van Iddekinge, Roth, Raymark, and Odle-Dusseau's (2012)
meta-analysis of pre-employment integrity test results confirmed that such tests are meaningfully related to counterproductive work behavior. ...The article also offered some cautionary conclusions, which appear to stem from the limited scope of the authors' focus and the specific research procedures used. Issues discussed in this commentary include the following: (a) test publishers' provision of studies for meta-analytic consideration; (b) errors and questions in the coding of statistics from past studies; (c) debatable corrections for unreliable criterion measures; (d) exclusion of laboratory, contrasted-groups, unit-level, and time-series studies of counterproductive behavior; (e) under-emphasis on the prediction of counterproductive workplace behaviors compared with job performance, training outcomes, and turnover; (f) overlooking the industry practice of deploying integrity scales with other valid predictors of employee outcomes; (g) implication that integrity test publishers produce biased research results; (h) incomplete presentation of integrity tests' resistance to faking; and (i) omission of data indicating applicants' favorable response to integrity tests, the tests' lack of adverse impact, and the positive business impact of integrity testing. This commentary, therefore, offers an alternate perspective, addresses omissions and apparent inaccuracies, and urges a return to the use of diverse methodologies to evaluate the validity of integrity tests and other psychometric instruments.
Ongoing issues in test fairness Camilli, Gregory
Educational research and evaluation,
04/2013, Volume:
19, Issue:
2-3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In the attempt to identify or prevent unfair tests, both quantitative analyses and logical evaluation are often used. For the most part, fairness evaluation is a pragmatic attempt at determining ...whether procedural or substantive due process has been accorded to either a group of test takers or an individual. In both the individual and comparative approaches to test fairness, counterfactual reasoning is useful to clarify a potential charge of unfairness: Is it plausible to believe that with an alternative assessment (test or item) or under different test conditions an individual or groups of individuals may have fared better? Beyond comparative questions, fairness can also be framed by moral and ethical choices. A number of ongoing issues are evaluated with respect to these topics including accommodations, differential item functioning (DIF), differential prediction and selection, employment testing, test validation, and classroom assessment.
The Diversity-Validity Dilemma Madera, Juan M.; Abbott, JeAnna
Cornell hospitality quarterly,
02/2012, Volume:
53, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
One of the most critical problems that hospitality firms face in selecting employees is to ensure that any employment tests the employer uses are valid and do not screen out minorities. For example, ...the use of cognitive ability tests often leads to subgroup differences between majority and minority group members. Such a discrepancy opens an employer to charges of adverse impact (against minorities), and employers often have adjusted (or otherwise disregarded) test scores to avoid potential adverse impact and give minorities an even-handed opportunity for employment or promotion. The practice of adjusting test scores in this way was set aside in 2009 by the U.S. Supreme Court, in Ricci v. DeStefano, in which the city of New Haven, Connecticut, attempted to avoid adverse impact by disregarding test results. The court said this amounted to discrimination against the majority group members who did well on the test. The court’s holding means that if a test creates apparent adverse impact, in the absence of strong basis in evidence for disregarding the test scores, the employer may face the awkward choice of being sued for adverse impact or disparate treatment, depending on how it treats the test. The implications of Ricci v. DeStefano for hospitality employers include ensuring that jobs are correctly analyzed before any test is given and that multiple forms of various valid types of test are used to select job candidates.
Almost 6 months after winning their U.S. Supreme Court case, a group of New Haven, Connecticut, firefighters celebrated their victory in grand style. The decision in Ricci v. DeStefano proved that ...the City of New Haven erred when it denied promotions to White firefighters who fared better on promotional examinations than did minority applicants. This article (a) examines the thrust of the Ricci decision, which involved two competing facets of the same equal employment opportunity (EEO) statute; (b) discusses the mistakes inherent in the testing procedures of the City of New Haven, Connecticut; (c) addresses the involvement of Justice Sonya Sotomayor in the decision; and (d) examines the implication of the decision for public-sector employers using testing procedures of the nature found in Ricci v. DeStefano. The author concludes that the decision underscores the need for use of alternative testing procedures and suggests that Ricci v. DeStefano is but a precursor to further litigation designed to render use of disparate-impact analysis unconstitutional.
To determine if isometric (static) strength accurately predicts dynamic lifting capacity.
107,755 male and 23,078 female prospective workers taking part in a post-offer employment test.
Subjects were ...tested for strength three standard static lifts and attained physical maxima for four dynamic lifts.
The data confirms modest correlations between isometric and dynamic measures. However, the standard errors of estimate for all isometric-to-dynamic predictions make such predictions meaningless for the practical purpose for which they are most commonly used.
The Static Leg Lift, Static Arm Lift and Static Back (Torso) Lift are not appropriate for making predictions relative to dynamic lifting capacity. Given the likely degree of error in such predictions, and in light of potential safety concerns as reported by previous investigators, employers, clinicians and risk managers now have substantial objective evidence to call such testing into question.
Purpose The objective of these two studies was to apply recommendations from the literature on stereotype threat to reduce the magnitude of subgroup differences in an employment context. ...Design/Methodology/Approach With a sample of prospective applicants for the job of firefighter, the effects of "reduced-threat" preparation sessions about the test (Study 1) and about the job (Study 2) were examined, relative to conventional counterparts. Findings In Study 1, there was no evidence to suggest that the reduced-threat test-related session was more effective than its conventional counterpart. In Study 2, the magnitude of subgroup differences was larger for those in the reduced-threat job-related session. Implications No evidence was found to suggest that standard personnel practice exacerbates existing subgroup differences, as compared to efforts to apply the recommendations from the literature on stereotype threat. Originality/Value This is one of the few investigations to study test-and job-related stereotype threat in an employment context. Additionally, this investigation is unique in that it compares conventional practices to those derived from the literature on stereotype threat.
