Major Update Completed of Three-Day IPMAAC Examination Planning Seminar
The International Personnel Management Association Assessment Council (IPMAAC) has just completed an extensive update and revision of its three-day seminar on Examination Planning. The seminar provides guidance on planning and developing employment and promotional assessments. It focuses on increasing the efficiency, productivity, appropriateness and defensibility of the examination process. It includes an extensive review of alternative assessment methods, case studies, examination planning forms, references, and other aids. Organizations from throughout the United States provided information on their best practices for use in the seminar.
Seminar participants are instructed on what job analysis information is needed for examination planning. Participants apply this instruction by reviewing and critiquing two completed job analysis studies.
The seminar reviews alternative assessment methods, including their advantages, disadvantages, relative costs, expertise required for development and administration, validity, reliability, adverse impact, types of requirements best assessed, and other data. Assessment methods reviewed include: minimum qualifications requirements, ratings of training and experience, bio-data, written tests, oral examinations, assessment centers, performance tests, physical and medical examinations, personality tests, interest tests, performance appraisal, probationary period, as well as other assessment methods. Seminar participants share their experiences in use of each assessment method. Participants receive a valuable chart which compares assessment methods on the criteria discussed in the seminar, and a list of references for each assessment method.
Extensive guidance is provided to participants on deciding what to measure and how to measure. The seminar manual includes examples of examination planning forms and completed examination plans. The examples are for different occupations and are from a wide variety of organizations, including the State of California (Energy Analyst), the State of New Jersey, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (Supervisory Border Patrol Agents), the City of Bridgeport Connecticut (Fire Lieutenant), and the International Personnel Management Association (Firefighter test). The focus of this segment of the training is on how to document and explain the job-relatedness of examination procedures, meet legal requirements, and meet the provisions of new professional testing standards.
Participants are given instruction on how to obtain information on various measurement approaches, how to evaluate research, how to find out about commercially available tests and test services, how to evaluate existing examination materials, and how to decide on use of a commercial test vs. developing their own custom-made test.
Participants receive guidance on developing and administering an assessment program, including test development steps, using the measures, sequencing them, scoring, setting passing scores, weighting and combining measures, and methods of test score use.
On the last afternoon of the three-day seminar, participants receive instruction on how to document the examination plan and plan for test development. Then, seminar participants plan two assessment programs based on job analysis information. Seminar instructors provide feedback on the completed examination plans.
Many examples of efficient assessment methods and a variety of case study materials are included in the 282 page seminar Participant Manual.
The examples of efficient methods include simplified training and experience rating procedures, and information on application of technology to assessment, such as use of computerized testing, on-line applications, and electronic document processing and storage. The efficient methods examples are based on the experience of the State of Pennsylvania, Aon Consulting, Santa Barbara County California, the State of Washington, and Riverside County California.
The seminar update was led by Charley Sproule, Director of Sproule and Associates. The seminar update team included Bruce Davey, Director of Bruce Davey Associates, and Nancy Abrams, Ph.D., Personnel Measurement Consultant. This same three-person team developed the initial version of this successful IPMAAC seminar. Many IPMAAC members contributed information and examples of their best work for use in the seminar. Radford University graduate students of Dr. Mike Aamodt prepared some of the updated course materials.
Most of the new training materials for this seminar were tried out in 2001 in Trenton, New Jersey and in 2002 in Baltimore, Maryland as part of a six-course training curriculum for Personnel Assessment Specialists. Seminar materials were refined based on feedback from the three try-outs of the seminar.
A one-day version of this updated three-day seminar is also available. The one-day seminar summary is being offered as a pre-conference workshop at the 2002 IPMAAC Annual Conference on Personnel Assessment in New Orleans Louisiana, and at the 2002 IPMA Human Resource Management Conference in Ottawa Canada.
Contact
For more information about training programs and costs, contact:
IPMA-HR
1617 Duke Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
Phone: (703) 549-7100
Fax: (703) 684-0948
Email: ipma@ipma-hr.org