Human Resource Knowledge

Concepts of testing for employment

Testing concepts include job analysis, reliability and validity.

1.Job Analysis: One of the important testing concepts is job analysis as it provides basic information about the type of the candidates needed by the organization. Job specification and job requirements provide information about the demands made by a job on the incumbent, whereas employee specification gives the information about the characteristics, qualities, behavior of the employees needed to perform a job successfully. Thus, employee specification is the basis to decide upon a particular test or tests and minimum acceptable score in order to test whether the candidates possessed the required amount and degree of behavior and qualities like intelligence, aptitude to perform the job successfully.

2.Reliability: After identifying the test(s), the administrator of test should ensure the reliability of test / instrument. Reliability of a test refers to the level of consistency of score or results obtained throughout a series of measurements. If a person obtains same or similar score in the tests conducted in first, second and third time, under the same conditions, it is said the test is reliable. The reliability of any selection technique / test refers to its freedom from systematic errors of measurements or its consistency under different conditions. A test is unreliable if the score differs considerably in first, second and third measurements. The causes of low reliability are: conducting the rest under non-standardized conditions, administering the test by different persons and under different psychological states of candidate, existence of factor of luck and ill-luck etc.
Generally, as suggested by Beach, the reliability coefficient should be between + 0.85 and + 1.00. In general, higher reliability can be obtained from written tests.

3.Validity: Any selection device should aim at finding out whether a candidate possessed the skills or talents required by a particular job or not. Each selection test aims at finding out whether a candidate possessed that particular skill / talent or not. For example, intelligence test aims at testing whether a particular candidate possessed the nature and level of intelligence essential to perform a job. If intelligence test is effective in measuring the level of intelligence, then it can be said that the test is a valid one. “The validity of a test is the degree to which it measures what it is intended to measure. A valid test predicts accurately the level of success or failure of a candidate on the job.

After the tests’ reliability and validity are tested, the personnel manager has to develop testing programs. The following steps can be followed in installing testing programs:

1.Formulation of the objectives of testing programs.

2.Analysis of jobs to identify those characteristics that appears necessary for job success.

3.Making of a tentative choice of tests for a try-out.

4.Administering of those tests to an experimental group of people.

5.Establishing of criteria for job success.

6.Analysis of results and making of decisions regarding test application.

Testing Terminology

Setting Passing Scores:

·A minimum score is that which generally shall at least twice as large as a chance score.

·A chance score is one which can be obtained even if a person knows nothing about test ‘s subject –matter.

·A norm is the percentage of people who get less than or equal to certain scores.

·Alternatives form means two or more versions of the same test which are identical in length, difficulty and type of coverage of questions but whose specific questions are different.

·A multiple choice test s one in which two or more possible choices are limited

·A true or false test contains a list of statements and the candidate given the test indicates which are true and which are false.

·A completion test contains sentences of one or more words or facts omitted, the task of the candidate giving the test is to insert the missing word or fact.

·An equivalency test is one of knowledge which indicates whether an applicant without the prescribed education or experience has the knowledge implied by an educational or work standard.

· An omnibus test is one which, although it contains diverse items, provides only a single score.

·A test battery means that the applicant is required to take two or more tests, each, individually-timed, scored and weighted.

·A work limit test is one in which the applicant is permitted to finish the given work and the amount of time he takes is recorded.

·A time-limit test is one in which the applicant is permitted to take fixed time and the amount of work he finishes is recorded.

Labels: HRM

posted by Paresh @ 11:27 AM