The use of decomposition in probability assessments of continuous variables

In this study, decomposition is used as a tool for the assessment of continuous probability distributions. The goal of using decomposition is to obtain better calibrated probability distributions by expressing a variable as a known function of several component variables. Three target quantities were used in the study. Each was assessed holistically and using two different decompositions. Thus, each subject provided three distributions for each of the three target quantities. The recomposed assessments were compared to holistic assessments. The distributions obtained using decomposition were found to be much better calibrated than those obtained holistically. Two methods of aggregating distributions from multiple subjects were also examined. One involves aggregating (averaging) distributions before recomposing while the second method involves recomposing and then averaging distributions for the target variable. The second method was found to be slightly better, although both showed better calibration than was found in the individual assessments.     

The effects of providing access to stimuli following choice making during vocal preference assessments

Two variations of a vocal paired-stimulus preference assessment were evaluated to determine whether the verbal reports of preference, given by individuals with developmental disabilities when no access to the activity was given, matched their verbal reports when access to the activity was given contingent on their choice. The results indicated different outcomes between the two methods for 6 of the 7 participants. Subsequent reinforcer assessments, conducted for 2 participants, showed that activities identified in the preference assessments that provided access contingent on selection resulted in more responding than did activities identified in the preference assessment that did not include access to items following their selection.     

Exploring the handshake in employment interviews

The authors examined how an applicant's handshake influences hiring recommendations formed during the employment interview. A sample of 98 undergraduate students provided personality measures and participated in mock interviews during which the students received ratings of employment suitability. Five trained raters independently evaluated the quality of the handshake for each participant. Quality of handshake was related to interviewer hiring recommendations. Path analysis supported the handshake as mediating the effect of applicant extraversion on interviewer hiring recommendations, even after controlling for differences in candidate physical appearance and dress. Although women received lower ratings for the handshake, they did not on average receive lower assessments of employment suitability. Exploratory analysis suggested that the relationship between a firm handshake and interview ratings may be stronger for women than for men. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).     

The relation of vocational aspirations and assessments to employment reality

A typology was used to organize Census data about kinds of employment, survey data about people's aspirations, and the results of vocational assessments made with and without norms for men and women at two educational levels-some high school or above, and some college or above. Results indicate that kinds of employment differ greatly for different educational levels and between the sexes. The distribution of people's aspirations resembles the distribution of actual employment with some notable exceptions. Results also indicate that the use of sex-based interest inventory norms is unrealistic because they create distributions that diverge greatly from the distribution of actual employment. Some implications of the congruence between kinds of people and their employment are discussed for vocational guidance, test development, and career development research and theory.     

Interrogative pressure in simulated forensic interviews: The effects of negative feedback

Much experimental research on interrogative pressure has concentrated on the effects of leading questions, and the role of feedback in influencing responses in the absence of leading questions has been neglected by comparison. This study assessed the effect of negative feedback and the presence of a second interviewer on interviewee responding in simulated forensic interviews. Participants viewed a videotape of a crime, answered questions about the clip and were requestioned after receiving feedback. Compared with neutral feedback, negative feedback resulted in more response changes, higher reported state anxiety and higher ratings of interview difficulty. These results are consistent with Gudjonsson and Clark's (1986) model of interrogative suggestibility. The presence and involvement of a second interviewer did not significantly affect interviewee responding, although trait anxiety scores were elevated when a second interviewer was present. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are considered.     

Experiences of surgery readiness assessments in British Columbia

Abstract

Background: A surgical readiness assessment is a major step in the medical journey of trans people seeking gender-affirming surgery. Much of the peer-reviewed literature surrounding surgical readiness assessments emphasizes the perspectives of academics and clinicians, leaving the voices of trans and gender diverse patients largely unheard.

Aims: This paper foregrounds patient experiences with surgery readiness assessments to discuss the tensions, challenges and opportunities they generate.

Methods: We conducted a thematic analysis of 35 in-depth interviews with trans people who accessed or were seeking to access gender-affirming surgery in British Columbia.

Results: We developed three main themes to capture participants’ narratives of their surgical assessment experiences. The first, assessments as gatekeeping, explores the stories of people who described their assessments as outdated and even discriminatory processes. The second, assessments as a barrier to care, discusses the informational missteps, bureaucratic regulations, economic issues, and geographic concerns that made assessments difficult to access. The third, assessments as useful, includes positive stories about assessments that often involved feeling supported by an assessor and feeling prepared for the next steps.

Discussion: These narratives demonstrate how much variation exists among people’s experiences of readiness assessments for gender-affirming surgery. No matter how their actual assessment turned out, many participants approached their appointments with a great deal of anxiety and trepidation. We attributed this stress was to challenges ranging from lengthy wait times, arbitrary medical gatekeeping, a lack of access to knowledgeable and supportive providers, unclear or changing administrative processes, and insufficient communication. To address these challenges, it is crucial for the medical system to create more accessible pathways with centralized, up-to-date information for people trying to access assessments. Patients are best served by multi-disciplinary gender-affirming teams that provide individualized care.     

Evaluation of a self-instruction package for conducting stimulus preference assessments

Research suggests that inexperienced individuals cannot accurately implement stimulus preference assessments given written instructions alone. Training that includes written instructions supplemented with feedback from a professional with expertise in conducting preference assessments has proven effective; unfortunately, expert-facilitated direct training may not be widely available. In the current study, we used multiple baseline designs to evaluate the efficacy of an antecedent-only self-instructional package to train staff members to implement two methods of stimulus preference assessments. Accuracy was low when participants had access to written instructions alone. When access to enhanced written instructions was provided (i.e., technical jargon was minimized; instructions included pictures, diagrams, and step-by-step examples), inexperienced staff accurately implemented the assessments. Results are discussed in terms of opportunities to disseminate behavior-analytic technologies through self-instruction and print resources.     

Effects of organizational citizenship behaviors on selection decisions in employment interviews

This article reports on an experiment examining the effects of job candidates' propensity to exhibit organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) on selection decisions made in the context of a job interview. We developed videos that manipulated candidate responses to interview questions tapping task performance and citizenship behavior content in 2 administrative positions. Results obtained from 480 undergraduates provided support for our hypotheses that job candidates who exhibited higher levels of helping, voice, and loyalty behaviors were generally rated as more competent, received higher overall evaluations, and received higher salary recommendations than job candidates who exhibited lower levels of these behaviors. These effects held even after taking into account candidate responses regarding task performance. We also found that candidate responses to OCB-related questions tended to have a greater effect on selection decisions for the higher level position (supervisor of administrative personnel) than for the lower level one (administrative assistant). Finally, content analyses of open-ended responses indicated that participants' selection decisions were particularly sensitive to candidates who exhibited low levels of voice and helping behaviors. Implications and future research are discussed.     

Identification and meta-analytic assessment of psychological constructs measured in employment interviews

There has been a growing interest in understanding what constructs are assessed in the employment interview and the properties of those assessments. To address these issues, the authors developed a comprehensive taxonomy of 7 types of constructs that the interview could assess. Analysis of 338 ratings from 47 actual interview studies indicated that basic personality and applied social skills were the most frequently rated constructs in this taxonomy, followed by mental capability and job knowledge and skills. Further analysis suggested that high- and low-structure interviews tend to focus on different constructs. Taking both frequency and validity results into consideration, the findings suggest that at least part of the reason why structured interviews tend to have higher validity is because they focus more on constructs that have a stronger relationship with job performance. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.     

Investigation of nonverbal discrimination against women in simulated initial job interviews

This study investigated nonverbal sex discrimination in simulated initial job interviews with women applicants. It was hypothesized that experienced interviewers would exhibit more negative behaviors while interviewing a woman for a “masculine” job (an incongruent interview), but more positive behaviors while interviewing a woman for a “feminine” job (a congruent interview). It was further hypothesized that the behavior of inexperienced interviewers would remain the same across interviews. Mock initial job interviews were videotaped and nonverbal behaviors were coded. As hypothesized, experienced interviewers exhibited more negative and fewer positive behaviors in the incongruent interviews, whereas inexperienced interviewers did not. Unexpectedly, inexperienced interviewers exhibited more positive and fewer negative behaviors during incongruent interviews. Implications for training to reduce nonverbal discrimination are discussed.     

The effects of specifying job requirements and using explicit warnings to decrease sex discrimination in employment interviews

To determine the relative effectiveness of instructions designed to reduce sex discrimination in employment interviews, 96 students rated resumes for both a male and a female applicant. In one instructional condition subjects were told the specific requirements necessary for success on the job. In a second condition subjects were warned that it was illegal to discriminate on the applicant's sex. A third condition received both instructions, and a fourth received neither. Results revealed a series of interactions suggesting that the use of legal warning alone tended to increase the ratings of male applicants in some cases and influenced how male evaluators rated all applicants in other cases. The major implications were that legal warnings may actually bias ratings in favor of male applicants and may occasionally lead male evaluators to make lenient ratings. The specification of job requirements was suggested as a viable method of reducing discrimination.This work was supported in part by funds from the Foundation of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and from the State of North Carolina. The author wishes to thank P. S. Siegfried, J. Thomas Puglisi, and an anonymous reviewer for their comments and revisions of an earlier draft.     

Consistency of supervisor and peer ratings of assessment interviews conducted by psychology trainees

Observation of counsellor skills through a one-way mirror, video or audio recording followed by supervisors and peers feedback is common in counsellor training. The nature and extent of agreement between supervisor–peer dyads are unclear. Using a standard scale, supervisors and peers rated 32 interviews by psychology trainees observed through a one-way mirror. Results indicated that peers and supervisors used similar dimensions to cluster the various competencies. Peers rated counsellor performance more positively for general counselling skills, but not for specialised techniques. Analyses revealed good supervisor–peer agreement for some items and poor agreement on others, with some differences being unacceptably large. The study has important implications for how feedback involving supervisors and peers might be managed and for peer supervision models.     

Cognitive ability in virtual reality: Validity evidence for VR game‐based assessments

Virtual reality (VR) technology may provide unique benefits for assessing individual characteristics, in contrast with traditional assessments. This study examined validity evidence for the use of VR game (VRG) scores to indicate specific cognitive abilities. Participants completed three VRGs, three computer‐based assessments (CBAs), and additional scales. To evaluate convergent validity, VRG scores were compared with CBA scores. For divergent validity, VRG scores were compared with five factors of personality based on the Five Factor Model. For criterion‐related validity, VRG scores were compared with academic achievement (i.e., grade point average). Findings generally provided support that the VRG scores are related to certain spatial reasoning subdimensions of cognitive ability. However, further research is needed to examine the qualities of VRGs as assessment tools.     

Effects of public feedback during RTI team meetings on teacher implementation integrity and student academic performance

As a result of the new revision of IDEA (2004), models of early intervention and response-to-intervention (RTI) have received a great deal of attention in the literature. Although various tiered models have been described in detail, one aspect of RTI that has received little empirical attention is the need to ensure integrity of intervention as part of a team decision making process. One method that has good support for improving treatment integrity is performance feedback (PFB); however, the utilization of PFB within a team context has received very little attention in the literature. Experiment 1 evaluated the effect of PFB delivered within the context of an RTI team on treatment integrity after fidelity had fallen to unacceptable levels. Experiment 2 evaluated the effects of PFB on the maintenance of treatment integrity prior to integrity fall off. Results indicate that PFB can be used as an efficient means of improving or maintaining treatment integrity when applied within a team model.     

Cross-cultural validity of integrity assessments for lower-level and higher-level jobs

This research brief examines the cross-cultural validity of two multi-dimensional integrity assessments, one for lower-level jobs and one for higher-level jobs. Job applicants for a global company completed the assessments as a part of the hiring process in three countries: the United States, South Africa, and Mexico. U.S. applicants tended to score higher (i.e., higher integrity) on these assessments and make fewer admissions of counterproductive work behaviors than applicants from South Africa and Mexico. The overall scores for these assessments (and most of the individual scales) were correlated significantly with, for each country separately and globally, three composites of self-reported counterproductive work behavior criterion measures (Theft, Counterproductivity, and Overall Risky Behavior). Construct validity evidence was examined with a measure of Collusion Avoidance (tolerance for colluding with external organized criminals). Overall, the results of this research highlight the importance of including an integrity assessment in the hiring processes for lower-level and higher-level (i.e., professional and managerial) jobs globally. Integrity assessments appear to have practical value in countries with higher prevalence of crime and corruption. The results also bolster previous research indicating that integrity assessments are valid outside of the U.S. context in which they were initially developed over 60 years ago.     

Temporal accuracy of mentally simulated transport movements

Several studies have indicated a clear correspondence in the durations of active versus mentally simulated actions. The present study examined whether this would also be found when a new and unfamiliar task (the pedalo) was given to 15 sports students aged 21 to 27 years, and the range of mental simulation was extended to cover two different modalities. Despite several modifications of experimental procedure, results always showed high correlations between actual and mental durations similar to those reported for walking by Decety, Jeannerod, and Prablanc in 1989. There were also higher scores on absolute error. However, there were no significant differences between mental simulations with open versus closed eyes. It is concluded that the timing of the execution and mental simulation of closed and cyclical movements is interrelated and based on common mechanisms.     

Development and initial validation of an indirect measure of transformational leadership integrity

An indirect measure of transformational leadership integrity was developed across three studies. In Study 1, the transformational leadership integrity implicit association test (TLI-IAT) was developed and tested with 65 leaders across heterogeneous organizational contexts. Study 2 involved 51 coaches from 18 sports. Results from Studies 1 and 2 supported the construct validity of the instrument, providing evidence of the instrument's convergent and discriminant validity. Study 3 involved 32 coaches and 133 players from six sports. Findings supported the criterion validity of the measure, providing evidence for the instrument's predictive validity. In sum, evidence is presented that supports the TLI-IATs construct and criterion validity. As such, the present research has made significant advancements to the transformational leadership integrity literature and provides researchers with an indirect measure of automatic transformational leadership integrity self-attitudes.     

Calibration of probability assessments by professional blackjack dealers, statistical experts, and lay people

The question addressed in this study is whether experts are better calibrated than lay people. We investigated how well people are calibrated when they assess the probabilities of card combinations in the game of blackjack. Three groups of subjects were used: professional dealers, statistical experts, and control subjects. The results showed that experience and statistical expertise do not make people better calibrated in this task. It is argued that the concept of calibration is not wholly appropriate to describe the obtained deviations from the normatively correct responses. This is illustrated by a discriminant analysis performed on the signed deviation scores, which resulted in an almost perfect separation of the three groups, although they were overlapping with respect to calibration.