Generating Race,Gender, and Other Subgroup Data in Personnel Selection Simulations: A pervasive issue with a simple solution

In the past 25 years, organizational researchers and practitioners have relied heavily on computer simulation research to understand how group mean differences and correlations affect overall validity and adverse impact in protected groups (e.g., racial/ethnic groups and gender) as they relate to personnel selection practices. We point out a multilevel issue affecting nearly all past simulations: The total correlations that these simulations intended to specify are somewhat distorted after group mean differences were introduced into the data. Although this distorting effect is minimal in most cases, it matters in some cases, and after all, the main virtue of statistical simulations is precision, both in the population parameters and sample data and statistics those parameters are supposed to generate. We demonstrate this distorting effect through one specific example, based on multiple predictors and meta‐analytic data, followed by a broader simulation for single predictors across a wide variety of selection conditions. Rather than merely point out this problem, we also provide a straightforward solution: multilevel formulas that incorporate both between‐ and within‐group correlations that always correct for this biasing problem, yielding more accurate simulation results. We conclude by discussing applications and promising extensions of this work.