Case study You just became the head of staffing for BabyBots, a manu- facturer of small robots. You were surprised to learn that the company had never validated the manual dexterity test it uses to assess job candidates for its manufacturing jobs. You decided to do a concurrent validation study and ad- ministered the test to thirty manufacturing workers. Their scores are reported in Table 8-4, along with their ages, sex, race, and job performance ratings. You also calculated the correlation between the manual dexterity test and job per- formance to assess the test's validity. You then examined the relationship between employees' test scores and their performance ratings. The results of this analysis are shown in Tables 8-5 and 8-6.
TaBle 8-4 Validation Data for the Manual Dexterity Test employee Sex 1 0 2 0 3 1 4 0 5 1 6 0 7 0 8 0 9 1 10 1 11 1 12 1 13 1 14 0 15 1 16 1 17 0 18 0 19 1 20 1 21 1 22 0 Test Performance Race age Score Rating 0 35 36 90 1 32 44 95 0 44 50
952424993236468913352941455092048509323442832464489030408703948952314790149 3980047489214038790443880133367204346890364892122468923122402250226112711 28 0 1 29 0 2 30 1 1 Mean SD Min Max Range 19 48 94 23 48 94 27 36 74 18 46 85 26 44 79 21 50 95 23 34 70 28 44 83 34.07 43.97 86.73 9.33 5.54 7.91 18.00 32.00 70.00 49.00 52.00 95.00 31.00 20.00 25.00 Performance rating: 0 = 0, efficiency, 100 = 100, efficiency Sex: 0 = male; 1 = female Race: 0 = Hispanic; 1 = White; 2 = Black
aBle 8-5 Correlation Table Job age Test Performance Age Test Job Performance 1.00 0.12 1.00 0.18 0.86 1.00 2 28 32 70 Note: Correlations underlined and in bold indicate statistical significance at a level of p 6 .05.
What kind of relationship exists between employees' scores on the manual dexterity tests and their performance rating? Suppose a candidate scored 44 on the manual dexterity test. The regression equation predicting job performance using the manual dexterity test is 32.465 + (1.234 x Manual Dexterity Test Score). What is the candidate's predicted job performance? Assume that only candidates veith predicted performance above 85 are to be hired. This translates to a score of at least 43 on the manual de.erity test. Assume only those with scores above 43 were hired (20 of the 30 people in this sample). Would the use of this test have led to evidence of adverse impact based on sex or race? The relevant data on the 20 people exceeding the cutoff are presented in the case study on page 226. Given the validity results you found, would you recommend use of this test as a selection device? If so, how would you use it?
Sample Solution