New PTC/MW Website Ready to Launch
by: Eric Dunleavy, DCI Consulting
This month we are excited to announce the launch of the new and improved PTC/MW website. If you are reading this note you have already seen some of the improvements to the website. Special thanks to Zack Horn (Aptima), our Webmaster, who has been leading this effort as part of the Communications committee. He has done a fantastic job on the website redesign and has incorporated some cutting edge technology. It is worth reiterating several of the new website features here. Specifically, the new website offers the following:
- The opportunity to update your PTC/MW registration in an easy, convenient, and secure fashion;
- The same opportunity to register for PTC/MW lunches and workshops well in advance;
- Real-time, auto-generated personnel testing and human resource management news based on keyword search terms;
- Current monthly headlines, including legal, Federal, and HR testing news;
- Calls and announcements;
- Jobs listings searchable by location;
- Calendar of events (meetings, conferences, etc.);
- The opportunity to subscribe to a public ‘PTC/MW feed’ and member-only feed that makes blog and news updates immediately available on your web-based reader (no longer once per month!);
- The ability to add your comments at the bottom of any and all of the PTC/MW posts and topics.
The new website also has a members-only section that includes some additional benefits. For example, current members will have access to a real-time online directory and a vast archive of past PTC/MW newsletters, presidential notes, and legal updates. In addition, registering for luncheons and workshops at discounted member rates will be done through the members-only area. This section will also have information on member news like transitions and announcements, which establish a sense of community among PTC/MW members. Members will also have the opportunity to subscribe to a feed for member information and share their thoughts via comments in every post.
If you have a current PTC/MW membership you will have initial access to the members-only area. You should have received a member email with the password to the members-only section. If you did not, chances are you need to renew your PTC/MW membership or update your contact information. Both of these tasks can be done very quickly on the new website. We recommend that you check out all of the above, including the online member directory (updated within 48 hours) to verify that your member status is current. As of March 1st, PTC/MW will issue new member passwords, and only current members who have renewed for 2010 will be issued a new password that will provide access on the members-only section.
A quick note on the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds that are now available with the website. I have to admit that I had little exposure to reader subscriptions until Zack enlightened me. RSS is a free publishing format that makes it simpler and easier for you to combine information from all of your favorite websites in one place (the reader). RSS feeds send newly-posted headlines (articles, announcements, etc.) directly and immediately to your choice of "reader.” Thus, there are no email updates clogging your inbox, and no need to visit each of your favorite websites individually; instead, the information from your favorite websites comes to you. In other words, from your reader you can access all of the headlines of interest to you from all of your favorite sites. All you need to do is sign up for a reader account (which are free) and then find the ‘subscribe’ icon on all of your favorite blog/news/professional websites. Zack has placed a user-friendly video (‘RSS in plain English’) on the new PTC/MW website to help you set up this technology. It takes no more than a few minutes to set up your reader and start subscriptions to your favorite websites. It is well worth your time.
PTC/MW Community Loses a Superstar: Frank Landy Passes Away
Most of the PTC/MW community is aware that the field lost a superstar in January when Frank Landy passed away after battling cancer. Frank was an exceptional I/O psychologist and cared deeply about the field. He excelled as an academic at Penn State and other universities, as a practitioner at various firms including SHL, Landy, Jacobs & Associates, and Landy Litigation Support Group, and as past president of SIOP. Frank wrote some of the most insightful and influential material available on validation theory, performance appraisal, and the role of I/O Psychology in employment discrimination litigation. He also wrote one of the most used ‘Introduction to I/O Psychology’ textbooks. He was a passionate speaker whose participation in presentations at professional conferences ensured some entertainment on top of content expertise I didn’t know Frank very well personally but many PTC/MW members did; the consensus is that he was as good a person as he was an I/O Psychologist. If you missed the funeral and would like to pay respect to Frank, donations can be made to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (http://www.mskcc.org/) in his name.
Looking for Something to Read?
It is always fun to see articles from our professional literature make headlines in the popular press. One recent example of this is an article from the Journal of Applied Psychology that made waves in the New York Times. The research article, by Filip Lievens, Deniz Ones, and Stephan Dilchert, focuses on the effectiveness of personality as a predictor of medical school performance (at a University in Belgium) The selection process for medical students affects us all, because that process will in part determine the pool of potential doctors available to all of us.
Results of the study suggested that extraversion, openness to experience, and conscientiousness showed increases in validity for predicting grade point averages, and gained importance for later academic performance when applied clinical practice was used as a performance measure. The authors concluded that emphasizing early medical school criteria might underestimate the predictive value of personality variables, and that more ‘contextual’ outcomes from later in medical school should be emphasized as well. This is an important consideration, particularly since there are currently no standardized assessments used to assess personality of applicants to medical school. It may be the case that individual medical schools assess personality via interviews, likely after already making pass/fail decisions based on other factors.
Unfortunately, the research did not assess the prediction of personality above and beyond cognitive assessments; in theory there may be some incremental validity if performance dimensions change substantially over time (i.e., move from more job knowledge-based measures toward more clinical and patient interaction outcomes). It is important to note that the personality assessments in this study were administered for research purposes during the first year of medical school, and not as an operational assessment that would affect applicant’s likelihood of acceptance into medical school. In this context test-takers may have had little incentive to ‘fake’ or present themselves in a more positive light. However, applicants would likely have incentive to present themselves in a more positive light if personality assessments would be operationally used to make medical school decisions, and as such it would be interesting to see these results replicated in an operational sample.
Given the salience of the topic, it isn’t a surprise that there are over three-hundred comments on the story’s website. These comments seem to fall into two general categories: (1) assertions that high cognitive ability/job knowledge is absolutely the most important characteristic for a doctor to have, or (2) that personality can really make a difference in doctor performance and should be measured and used in more appropriate ways (without much mention of the role of cognitive abilities). Groups in the United States like the Association for American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which is responsible for the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT), are currently investigating the possibility of developing standardized non-cognitive assessments that could be administered to medical school applicants.
Intuitively, it seems reasonable to combine cognitive and non-cognitive assessments in predicting medical school (and doctor) performance; this isn’t a novel strategy in our literature. Research has shown that combining constructs can increase prediction when the performance domain is complex (Murphy & Shiarella, 1997). Of course, combining constructs may also decrease adverse impact (Murphy, 2009; Sackett, De Corte, & Lievens, 2009), and thus increase the diversity of the medical student population. However, research has clearly shown that the gains in validity and diversity depend on a variety of factors (Ryan, Ployhart, & Friedel, 1998).
So should the predictor space be expanded? More research focusing on the incremental prediction of personality dimensions above cognitive abilities and job knowledge for medical school performance would certainly help answer this question. Adding non-cognitive predictors to the equation seems like a reasonable response to the fact that the medical student criterion space may have expanded to include clinical skills, empathy, communication, etc. However, like all selection situations, it is critical to weight different performance dimensions based on their relative importance, and to use similar weighting on the predictor side. In this context the job knowledge and decision making ability needed to accomplish performance goals like evaluating a patient, making a correct diagnosis, and prescribing appropriate treatments seem worthy of substantial weight. It may be reasonable to consider using personality in addition to cognitive ability and job knowledge, but not in place of those constructs.
Upcoming PTC/MW Meeting Schedule
Kevin Kramer from Accenture will be presenting at the February luncheon (Wednesday, February 10th, 11:30am – 1:30pm). The title of the talk is “I/O Psychology’s Role in Strategic Human Resources Outsourcing (HRO): How can we shape the future of HR?” Kevin will discuss recent research and trends in HRO, areas where I/O Psychology can contribute more value, and strategies to help our profession “raise its game” to a higher level. In March (Wednesday, March 10th, 8:30 – 11:30am) Dr. Ken Lahti from PreVisor will present a workshop on the current state of unproctored internet testing (UIT). He will discuss some of challenges of UIT, best practices to overcome those challenges, and review some cutting edge research innovations and next steps in research.
Closing Note
On a closing note, the SIOP name change vote has come and gone, and after a very close vote we are still SIOP by a total of 15 votes (515 to 500). This vote led to some great professional discussion, and many of us thought long and hard (and strategically) about exactly what we do and what we want our discipline and society to look like. Keep an eye out for the March PTC/MW Quarterly newsletter for a more detailed consideration of what the SIOP name change vote may mean.
References
Lievens, F., Ones, D. S., & Dilchert, S. (2009). Personality scale validities increase throughout medical school. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 1514–1535.
Murphy, K. R. (2009). How a broader definition of the criterion domain changes our thinking about adverse impact. In J. L. Outtz (Ed.), Adverse impact: Implications for organizational staffing and high stakes selection. New York: Routledge.
Murphy, K. R. & Shiarella, A. H. (1997). Implications of the multidimensional nature of job performance for the validity of selection tests: Multivariate frameworks for studying test validity. Personnel Psychology, 50, 823-854.
Ryan, A. M., Ployhart, R. E., & Friedel, L. A. (1998). Using personality testing to reduce adverse impact: a cautionary note. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83, 298-307.
Sackett, P. R., De Corte, W., & Lievens, F. (2009). Decision Aids for addressing the validity-adverse impact trade-off. In J. L. Outtz (Ed.), Adverse impact: Implications for organizational staffing and high stakes selection. New York: Routledge.
Comments