Quick Technical Notes – Validation of Career Insights^SM

Career Insights^SM assessments include validated measurements for Core Personality Traits, Cognitive Abilities and Attitudes. 

These assessments were constructed in accordance with the revised Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (1999) promulgated jointly by the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education, together with the revised Principles for the Validation and Use of Personnel Selection Procedures (2003), developed by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology—a division of the American Psychological Association. The development of the Career Insights^SM Attitude also follows the steps for creating a new psychometrically sophisticated instrument outlined by Lanyon and Goodstein in Personality Assessment published in 1997 by John Wiley & Sons. 

In addition, it is important to note that Career Insights^SM Assessments have been designed specifically for business selection, development and training. It is not, and was never developed as a clinical tool and does not fall under any of the guidelines as a medical test as defined by the ADA and recent case law.

The Career Insights^SM Personality and Cognitive Assessments –

The Career Insights^SM Personality Assessment is a 70-item assessment based on the Five-Factor approach to personality measurement and the Career Insights^SM Cognitive Assessment is a 30-item assessment.  These assessments have been standardized on a sample of over 6,000 applicants for employment at a variety of companies across the United States.  This research, summarized in a recent (2005) technical manual, provides strong support for the reliability and validity of Career Insights^SM in screening applicants for employment.

The Career Insights^SM Attitude Assessment –

A pool of 224 items was created to tap the six domains of counterproductive behavior as well as the Good Impression scale.  These items were administered to successive waves of volunteers from a variety of employers.  Those items that best correlated with the total score of that particular scale were included in the next wave of testing, until 20 items for each scale had been selected for inclusion in the final test.  Each of the 20 items included in the final version of the test correlated at least .75 with the total score of that scale. This item selection process was the initial step in creating a valid instrument.

The construct validity of Career Insights^SM Attitude Assessment is also clearly apparent in the selection process.  As the test authors point out in their earlier text, obvious items with clear face or construct validity invariably have the highest internal consistency.  All of the items in the Career Insights^SM Attitude Assessment are direct inquiries into the behaviors subsumed in that domain and no subtle items were included in even the initial pool of 224 items.

The high internal consistency of the Career Insights^SM Attitude Assessment is shown in the uniformly high Cronbach alphas that have been obtained in all of the test samples, typically in the .79-.88 range depending upon the composition of the test sample.  Test-retest reliabilities of Career Insights^SM Attitude Assessment scales ranged from .77 to .88 with a median correlation of .86. These compare favorably with previously reported internal consistencies (Cronbach alphas).

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The major issue inherent in any use of a pre-employment screening process is the degree to which it differentiates potentially successful applicants from those unlikely to be successful. The Herman Group International will work collaboratively with our client’s staff to ensure that Career Insights^SM provides such differentiation.  Specifically, we will benchmark jobs to identify the pattern of test scores that can identify potentially successful employees.  Once this pattern is established, we will collaborate to determine the effectiveness of Career Insights^SM in improving the quality of those candidates selected for employment.

These procedures meet the test of “business necessity,” the criterion established by both legislation and case law that protects applicants from discrimination—either overt or unintentional.  In other words using a pre-employment selection procedure that leads to the hiring of the most qualified persons is typically regarded as an acceptable process, especially if such a process is based upon a job analysis, such as benchmarking, and can be empirically shown to improve the quality of the employer’s workforce.

As we are continually updating our technical studies, it is our intention to extend these validity studies and we would be eager to work any customers to design, conduct and analyze such research data.

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