Fairness in Employment Testing: Validity Generalization, Minority Issues, and the General Aptitude Test Battery

Declining American competitiveness in world economic markets has renewed interest in employment testing as a way of putting the right workers in the right jobs. A new study of the U.S. Department of Labor's General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) Referral System sheds light on key questions for America's employers: How well does the GATB predict job success? Are there scientific justifications for adjusting minority test scores? Will increased use of the GATB result in substantial increases in productivity?

Fairness in Employment Testing evaluates both the validity generalization techniques used to justify the use of the GATB across the spectrum of U.S. jobs and the policy of adjusting test scores to promote equal opportunity.

• Front Matter
• Summary
• 1 The Policy Context
• 2 Issues in Equity and Law
• 3 The Public Employment Service
• 4 The GATB: Its Character and Psychometric Properties
• 5 Problematic Features of the GATB: Test Administration, Speedness, and Coachability
• 6 The Theory of Validity Generalization
• 7 Validity Generalization Applied to the GATB
• 8 GATB Validities
• 9 Differential Validity and Differential Prediction
• 10 The VG-GATB Program: Concept, Promotion, and Implementation
• 11 In Whose Interest: Potential Effects of the VG-GATB Referral System
• 12 Evaluation of Economic Claims
• 13 Recommendations for Referral and Score Reporting
• 14 Central Recommendations
• References
• Appendix A: A Synthesis of Research on Some Psychometric Properties of the GATB
• Appendix B: Tables Summarizing GATB Reliabilities
• Appendix C: Biographical Sketches, Committee Members and Staff
• Index

John A. Hartigan and Alexandra K. Wigdor, Editors; Committee on the General Aptitude Test Battery, National Research Council

Declining American competitiveness in world economic markets has renewed interest in employment testing as a way of putting the right workers in the right jobs. A new study of the U.S. Department of Labor's General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) Referral System sheds light on key questions for America's employers: How well does the GATB predict job success? Are there scientific justifications for adjusting minority test scores? Will increased use of the GATB result in substantial increases in productivity? Fairness in Employment Testing evaluates both the validity generalization techniques used to justify the use of the GATB across the spectrum of U.S. jobs and the policy of adjusting test scores to promote equal opportunity.

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