The Ontological Status of Persons*

Chisholm held that persons are essentially persons. The Constitution View affords a non‐Chisholmian way m defend the thesis that persons are essentially persons. The Constitution View shows how persons are constituted by‐but not identical to‐human animals. On the Constitution View, being a person determines a person's persistence conditions. On the Animalist View, being an animal determines a person's persistence conditions. Things of kind K have ontological significance if their persistence conditions are determined by their being members of K. On Chisholm's view, persons have ontological significance, but animals do not. On Animalism, animals have ontological significance, but persons do not. After explaining the notion of ontological significance, this article argues that persons do have ontological significance, and hence that Animalism is not true     

PARALLEL TEST FORM DEVELOPMENT: A PROCEDURE FOR ALTERNATE PREDICTORS AND AN EXAMPLE

A procedure for developing alternate test forms that are parallel in the sense that scores on the different forms have similar means, standard deviations, and factor structures is described and applied to a bio-data inventory and a situational judgment test. Careful consideration of item-by-item parallelism during development resulted in alternate forms that were parallel at the item level. Further, comparison with a biodata test form comprised of items randomly selected from a pool of biodata items revealed that for the types of measures described here it may be necessary to produce parallel forms of each item to create alternate forms that are parallel in the way in which Cronbach (1947) originally defined parallelism.     

OPERATIONALIZING THE "BEHAVIORAL CONSISTENCY" APPROACH: SELECTION TEST DEVELOPMENT BASED ON A CONTENT-ORIENTED STRATEGY

This paper delineates a systematic procedure for operationalizing the "behavioral consistency" notion, proposed by Wernimont and Campbell (1968), for a Civil Service job. The steps used in developing selection tests from a content-oriented strategy are illustrated, and the transformation of specific job behaviors into tests related to job content but modified so that inexperienced applicants can complete them is demonstrated. Test reliability and judged content validity of the examinations are presented.     

THE INFLUENCE OF TRAINEE ATTITUDES ON TRAINING EFFECTIVENESS: TEST OF A MODEL

Studies of the influence of trainee characteristics on training effectiveness have focused on the ability level necessary to learn program content. Motivational and environmental influences on training effectiveness have received little attention. The purpose of this study was to test an exploratory model describing the influence on trainee career and job attitudes on training outcomes (learning, behavior change, performance improvement). Results of the study suggest that job involvement and career planning are antecedents of learning and behavior change. Future research directions and practical implications of the results are discussed.