Transcript Chapter 16
Chapter 16 Assessment, Careers, and Business CAREER CHOICE AND TRANSITION Measures/Tests may be used to assist in career choices: • tests to survey interests, • aptitudes, skills • attitudes toward work and confidence in one’s skills 16-2 MEASURES OF INTEREST Interest measure: an instrument designed to evaluate testtakers’ likes, dislikes, leisure activities, curiosities, and involves in various pursuits for comparison with groups of various occupations and professions One variable considered closely related to occupational success is personal interest: An individual’s interests may be sufficiently solidified by age 15 that they can be useful in career planning. 16-3 EXAMPLES TO MEASURES OF INTEREST 1. Strong Interest Inventory • G. Stanley Hall (1907) • Designed to assess children’s interest in various recreational pursuits 2. Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB) • Edward K. Strong, Jr. (1928) 3. Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII) • David P. Campbell (1974) • A revised version of the SVIB, most recently revised in 2004 and renamed the Strong Interest Inventory, Revised Edition • Pattern of interests are compared to those patterns of people actually employed in various occupations and professions 16-4 EXAMPLES TO MEASURES OF INTEREST 4. Self-Directed Search: • Explores interests within the context of Holland’s (1997) theory of vocational personality types and work environments • According to Holland’s theory, vocational choice is an expression of one of six personality types: • • • • • • Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, or Conventional 16-5 MEASURES OF ABILITY AND APTITUDE 1. 2. Wonderlic Personnel Test measures mental ability in a general sense, assessing spatial skill, abstract thought, and mathematical skill Bennet Mechanical Comprehension Test: a measure of a testtaker’s ability to understand the relationship between physical forces and various tools and other common objects 16-6 MEASURES OF ABILITY AND APTITUDE 3. General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB): a tool used often by various employment offices to identify aptitudes for occupations. Consists of 12 timed tests that take approximately three hours total to complete 16-7 CAREER CHOICE AND TRANSITION 16-8 MEASURES OF PERSONALITY • The issue of personality measures in employment settings is fraught with controversy: Which aspect of personality should be measured? Different aspects have greater relevance for different occupations. • Researchers have examined work performance in relation to Big 5 traits: • Conscientiousness and extraversion scores have been correlated with good work performance • Neuroticism scores have been correlated with poor work performance • Personality assessment in employment-related research may begin with Costa and McCrae’s (1992) Big Five, Tellegen’s (1985) Big Three, or Holland’s Big Six, or any number of alternative personality measures. Note: The relationship between personality and work performance is difficult to establish a relationship empirically between personality and work performance 16-9 MEASURES OF PERSONALITY 1. Integrity test: • A test specifically designed to predict employee theft, honest, adherence to establish procedures, and/or potential violence • May be used to screen new employees or evaluate current ones • Whether integrity tests measure what they intend to measure is debatable. 16-10 MEASURES OF PERSONALITY 2. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): • a test used to classify assesses by psychological type and to shed light on the “basic differences in the ways human beings take information and make decisions” • referenced the writings of Carl Jung 16-11 OTHER MEASURES IN CAREER CHOICE AND TRANSITION • Checklist of Adaptive Living Skills (CALS): surveys the life skills needed to make a successful transition from school to work • Cross-Cultural Adaptability Inventory (CCAI): a self-administered and self-scored instrument designed to provide information on the testtaker’s ability to adapt to other cultures, yielding information about one’s readiness to adapt to new situations, tolerate ambiguity, maintain one’s personal identity in new surroundings, and interact with people from other cultures 16-12 WHEN CAN ASSESSMENT BE USED IN A WORK PLACE? 1. Screening: a relatively superficial process of evaluation based on certain minimal standards, criteria, or requirements 2. Selection: a process whereby each person evaluated for a position will be either accepted or rejected for that position 3. Classification: a categorization or “pigeon-holing” with respect to two or more criteria 4. Placement: a disposition, transfer, or assignment to a group or category made on the basis of one criterion 16-13 MEASURES OF PRODUCTIVITY • Measures of productivity help to define the current position of a business and what is required for it to get where it wants to be • Forced distribution technique: a procedure involving distribution of a predetermined number of assesses into various categories describing performance • Critical incidents techniques: involves the supervisor recording positive and negative employee behaviors 16-14 MOTIVATION MEASURES Champagne (1969) developed a motivational questionnaire to tap the values of assessees in regards to motivation The questionnaire addressed 12 factors used by companies to entice employment applications: fair pay, steady job, paid vacations and holidays, job benefits, interesting work, good working conditions, etc. Among a population of rural, unskilled participants, “steady job” was more important 16-15 MEASURES OF BURNOUT What is Burnout? A psychological syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur among individuals who work with other people to some capacity. There is: Emotional exhaustion: an inability to give of oneself emotionally to others Depersonalization: the distancing of oneself from other people and the development of cynical attitudes toward them 16-16 MEASURES OF BURNOUT Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) • Contains 22 items divided into three subscales: Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Personal Accomplishment • Using this instrument, researchers have found that some occupations are characterized by higher levels of burnout than others (e.g., nursing) 16-17 MEASUREMENT OF ATTITUDES Measuring implicit attitudes • Implicit attitude: a nonconscious, automatic association in memory that produces a disposition to react in some characteristic manner to a particular stimulus • Implicit Attitudes Test (IAT): a computerized sorting task by which implicit attitudes are gauged with reference to the testtaker’s reaction times • The IAT is based on the premise that subjects will find it easier when they perceive the stimuli presented to them as being strongly associated 16-18 OTHER TOOLS OF ASSESSMENT • Many commercial research firms maintain a list of a large number of people who have agreed to respond to questionnaires that are sent to them (a consumer panel) • A diary panel involves respondents that must keep detailed records of their behavior, including records of products they purchased or coupons they used