Adverse Impact and Test Validation: A Practitioner's Guide to Valid and Defensible Employment Testing

Adverse impact analyses and test validation promote social justice and equity. Employers who unknowingly use invalid tests or recruitment procedures that have an adverse impact are reducing minority and/or female representation in their workforce, unfairly screening out qualified workers and (worst of all) just plain discriminating. Dan Biddle's Adverse Impact and Test Validation provides you with analyses that allow you to identify which of your selection procedures have adverse impact. The validation steps will help you decide whether to keep the selection procedure (because it's valid), change it, or stop using it altogether. This second edition contains new material on using multiple regression to evaluate pay practices and provides step-by-step instructions for using SPSS or Excel for evaluating your company's pay practices for possible inequities. New content on how to define "Internet applicants" and set up defensible Basic Qualifications (BQs) for online recruiting will help employers ensure compliance with EEO regulations and screen in qualified applicants. Specific guidelines for developing and validating written job knowledge tests, such as those used for police and fire promotional testing, have also been included in this new edition. The downloadable resources include tools (which may be used on a trial evaluation basis) describing several of the functions described in the book, including Adverse Impact Toolkit®, Test Validation and Analysis Program® (TVAP®), Guidelines Oriented Job Analysis® (GOJA®) Manual, and Content Validity Checklists. This highly pragmatic guide goes beyond the concepts, theories and ideas behind adverse impact and test validation. It not only explains what to do but crucially, also shows you how to do it. The second edition has been expanded to include two brand new chapters with a new Appendix and comes with new editions of the accompanying software. As a means of protecting your organization from litigation, damage to employee relations and to your corporate reputation, Adverse Impact and Test Validation is a 'must-have' purchase for human resource professionals, testing and recruitment specialists.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Adverse impact; Selection procedure development and validation; Developing, validating, and analyzing written tests; Developing, validating, and analyzing structured interviews; Developing, validating, and analyzing training, education and experience requirements; Using selection procedures: cutoff scores, banding, ranking, and weighting; Using multiple regression analysis to examine compensation practices; Internet applicant regulations: recordkeeping, adverse impact, and Basic Qualifications (BQs); Appendix: Seven steps for developing a content valid job knowledge written test; References; List of cases; Index.

About the Author :
Dan A. Biddle, Ph.D. is president and CEO of Biddle Consulting Group, Inc., an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and Affirmative Action consulting firm. Since 1974, BCG has provided expert witness and/or consulting services in over 200 state, federal, and circuit level court cases involving EEO and test validation matters. BCG has over 1000 clients worldwide.

Review :
Reviews from the first edition: 'Before the resurgence of the civil rights movement in the middle of the twentieth century, many employers had relegated the development of employee selection procedures to persons of the technician level. This was reinforced by some academics employment selection "cookbooks". These activities led to the use of many improper selection procedures that not only hurt the employment prospects of many groups, but also served no useful purpose for the employer. As new civil rights acts became effective and guidelines regarding employee selection were promulgated, it was quickly realized by both employers and psychologists-both in industry and academia-that the technical issues were far beyond the technician level. In fact even today, some of the issues are so complicated that only a small minority of psychologists can rightly claim to really understand them. Dr Biddle's book is an excellent effort to bridge the gap between the technical and the practical. The procedures presented are informed by the most relevant technical information and by present legal requirements. This book is best suited for non-technicians who have at least a general foundation of relevant technical knowledge.' Mary L. Tenopyr, AT&T, and Past President of SIOP (Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology)