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,IOP4863 PERSONNEL AND CAREER PSYCHOLOGY EXAM PREPARATION
PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY
Question 1
We need criteria to predict future performance or evaluate current performance. It is
therefore important to develop adequate and appropriate criteria on which to base
personnel decisions. These decisions ultimately influence a worker’s career. In order
to understand the theory of criteria better, discuss the following:
1. essential requirements of criterion development
2. steps in criterion development
3. evaluating criteria
4. criterion contamination
[25 marks]
Answer to question 1
Criteria are standards that can be used as yardsticks for measuring an employee’s
degree of success on the job. It is an evaluative standard that can be used to
measure a person's performance, attitude, motivation and so forth.
1. CHALLENGES IN CRITERIA DEVELOPMENT:
1.1 Job performance unreliability:
• Intrinsic unreliability: as a result of personal inconsistency in performance.
• Extrinsic unreliability: as a result of variability that is external to job demands
or individual behaviour (e.g. machine failure and weather conditions)
1.2 Job performance observation:
All evaluations of performance depend ultimately on observation of one sort or
another, but different methods of observing performance may lead to markedly
different conclusions.
1.3 Dimensionality of job performance:
Lastly, the question can be posed whether the ratings that were made of the various
aspects of job performance can be combined into a single global score. This
indicates the dimensionality of job performance. Cascio and Aguinis (2005; 2011)
argue that global criteria seem to work in most personnel selection situations.
,IOP4863 PERSONNEL AND CAREER PSYCHOLOGY EXAM PREPARATION
2. STEPS IN CRITERIA DEVELOPMENT.
2.1 Job analysis and or organizational needs.
2.2 Develop measures of actual behaviour relative to expected behaviour as
identified in job and need analysis. These measures should complement
objective measures of organizational outcomes.
2.3 Identify criterion dimensions underlying such measures by factor analysis,
cluster analysis or pattern analysis.
2.4 Develop reliable measures.
2.5 Determine the predictive validity of each independent variable (predictor) for
each one of the criterion measures taking them one at a time.
3. EVALUATING THE CRITERIA:
3.1 Relevance:
These criteria must apply to the actual job performance, they must be
relevant.
3.2 Sensitivity / Discriminability:
They must also be able to discriminate reasonably and accurately between
employees who will be effective in future and those who will be ineffective.
3.3 Practicality:
These criteria must be practical in that they should not become impractical to
apply and interfere significantly with ongoing operations.
4. CRITERIA CONTAMINATION:
Fairness and bias are currently a contentious issue in the South African situation and
are addressed in various acts of parliament including the Employment Equity Act and
Labour Relations Act.
Criterion contamination occurs when the actual criterion includes variance that is
unrelated to the ultimate criterion. Contamination can be subdivided into two distinct
parts, error and bias.
Error is random variation due to non-standardized procedures in testing, individual
fluctuations in feelings and cannot correlate with anything except by chance alone.
, IOP4863 PERSONNEL AND CAREER PSYCHOLOGY EXAM PREPARATION
Bias represents systematic criterion contamination that correlates with predictor
measures.
4.1 Bias due to knowledge of predictor information
4.2 Bias due to group membership.
4.3 Bias in ratings
Question 2 (May / June 2016, Jan Feb 2015,
Generally, the South African labour laws prohibit unfair discrimination. The Labour
Relations Act 66 of 1995 and the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998 are explicit on
issues of unfair discrimination. In spite of this regulatory framework, debates around
the issues of fairness remain intense. Fairness in personnel psychology has to be
demonstrated, using scientific methods. Discuss fairness in employment decisions
by focusing on the following:
1. The concept of unfair discrimination, differential validity and adverse impact. (6)
2. Use the scatterplots provided to discuss the complexity of fairness in
employment decisions. In your discussion, refer to specific scatterplots to illustrate
differential predictor-criterion relationship which is legal and appropriate, or which
is inappropriate and may have adverse impact. (19)
[25 marks]
2.1
Unfair discrimination: It exists when persons with equal probabilities of success on
the job have unequal probabilities of being hired for the job. Can be based on
gender, race, etc.
Differential validity: If you test different groups (for example in terms of race and
gender) you may on the same test get different validities for the different groups.
This is called differential validity.
Adverse impact: Members of one group are selected at substantially greater rates
than members of another group.
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