Practice Exchange

Ilene Gast, Associate Editor

This column highlights innovative assessment programs of interest to assessment professionals. If you are conducting a project that would interest the ACN readers, or if you know someone who is, please let me hear from you. I can be reached by phone at (202) 305-0590, by fax at (202) 305-3664, or e-mail at IFGAST@AOL.COM.

This month I decided to do something a little bit different. I would like to highlight a reference that promises to be a valuable guide for practitioners. The book, Applied Measurement Methods in Industrial Psychology, was edited by Deborah L. Whetzel and George R. Wheaton and is published by Consulting Psychologists Press, Davies Black Publishing (1997). The review was prepared by Carol Meyers for PTC-Arizona's newsletter and is reprinted with permission.

Measurement Methods in Industrial Psychology

by Carol Meyers, Arizona Public Service Company

From time to time, I've spoken with colleagues about my ongoing mission to acquire materials to use in educating human resource professionals about testing.

It's not likely that I'm going to provide extracts from Cronbach, Sackett, or Hunter & Schmidt, unless I want to eat lunch alone into the next millennium. So, over the years, I've put together in my own notebook topics containing information about the testing process. These are topics they don't need to know in depth, but should understand at least a little. It helps them because they have a better overview of testing to give to their clients. It helps me because it makes communication on testing much easier.

Against this backdrop, it was with pleasure that I sat down to read Applied Measurement Methods in Industrial Psychology, edited by Whetzel and Wheaton. Dr. Whetzel is a psychologist with the U.S. Postal Service. Mr. Wheaton is a vice-president with the American Institutes for Research (AIR).

The editors and contributing writers make no pretense about the book covering the "bare bones" of the presented topics. The book includes five sections:

Conducting Job Analyses
Developing a Test Plan
Developing Measures to Predict Job Performance
Developing Measures of Job Performance
Conducting Studies to Assess the Quality of the Measurement Program (Validation of Selection Instruments)

The features of the book that makes it so useful are:

Well-written in fairly "low tech" lingo
Very well organized material that is easy to follow
Use of one job (electrician) as an example throughout the book
Written with a view to the beginning practitioner or human resource professional - a real "how to" and applications approach
Excellent information tables
Good summaries at the end of each chapter

Whetzel and Wheaton can be commended for doing a very nice job of editing the material and ensuring that all sections maintain a very standard format. Not doubt, some may give a "thumbs down" on the attempt to summarize so much material into a scant 384-plus pages. However, for my purposes, this book is a pre-holiday treat and I know my copy will be "well thumbed" by this time next year. (Note: The phone number for Davies-Black is 1-800-624-1765)