Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Speed v. power

Part of my job is constantly trying to figure out how to communicate better with our customers (hiring supervisors). Discussions about validity and reliability may interest me, but it's a guaranteed recipe for blank stares from most people. So we think of other ways to talk about the pros and cons of tests.

This document is one attempt at communicating assessment research in layperson terms. It graphs power (validity) on the Y-axis and speed of administration on the X-axis. We could easily have chosen other criteria, such as adverse impact or applicant acceptance, but we felt when you get right down to it, these are the factors customers care about most.

So what do you see when you look at this graph? Do you think it communicates what we should be communicating? Have we over- or under-stated the case on any of the methods? Does this detract from basing the decision on job analysis?

4 comments:

GMTurner said...

I would reverse the X-axis to show "power increasing with time" rather than "power decreasing with speed" as it shows now, at least in a general sense.

BryanB said...

Good suggestion!

EPMD said...

Good graph. Would suggest creating a similar graph to reflect group differences. The two could be used in conjunction to help communicate that written MC tests are not necessarily the best option despite the fact that they are powerful and fast.

BryanB said...

another good suggestion! I'll put one together.