JOB CLASSIFICATION APPROACHES AND THE IMPLEMENTATION OF VALIDITY GENERALIZATION RESULTS

This paper compares two job classification methods for showing the appropriateness of cognitive tests in settings that were not involved in supplying data for a validity generalization analysis. One approach was an elaborate quantitative procedure that involved a lengthy job inventory and a multivariate item analysis. This approach was shown to be highly successful when applied to the responses from 1179 job inventories collected in 54 petroleum-petrochemical plants from 30 different companies. The other procedure involved simple job classification judgments by supervisors and incumbents. This latter approach was shown to be as effective, but was much less time consuming and costly. Professional and legal implications of these findings are discussed.