Good afternoon. I'm Dr. Shani Carter, and I'm a professor of business at
Wagner College in New York City. I teach undergraduate and MBA courses in
human resources, organizational behavior, leadership, entrepreneurship,
international business, and I also teach the thesis and the internship course.
I became acquainted with Tests in Print and the Mental Measurements Yearbook in
the early 1990s when I needed to choose cognitive ability test to use for my
doctoral dissertation at Cornell University. I choose to use Tests in
Print and the Mental Measurements Yearbook my graduate courses to
familiarize my students with the rich resources that are available to them when
they are designing procedures for hiring and promoting employees. Most managers
lack training in psychometrics, but if they're relying on the test reviews and
Mental Measurements Yearbook, they are more likely to hire appropriately qualified
employees and to avoid discrimination lawsuits that result from improper hiring.
The project requires students to use the test reviews and Mental Measurements
Yearbook to choose a test that will be effective to use to screen job applicants.
The students will learn that they do not need to create tests from scratch,
but that instead, it is relatively easy for them to locate a reliable and valid
tool to measure nearly any knowledge, skill, or ability. Students will also learn
the importance of validity and reliability of measures for adherent
to discrimination laws. Students usually respond with trepidation upon initially
receiving the assignment because they are unaware of the content of the Mental
Measurements Yearbook and its ease of use. But after completing the assignment, they
feel empowered to manage employee selection procedures. The assignments
should be given only after students receive a grounding in cognitive ability,
employment laws, validity, reliability and selection methods, but the assignment
could be modified to focus only on comparing and contrasting test reviews.
There is the additional step of creating a selection procedure. The student's
workload is relatively light, and they should be able to complete the assignment
in a few hours. Faculty grading of the assignment is relatively simple if students
are required to use the assigned template to submit their work. If the students are
particularly apprehensive about the assignment, then the faculty member
could show a copy of one Mental Measurement Yearbook test reviews to
students when distributing the assignment, but bear in mind that doing so will
eliminate the students' joy of discovery if they first access Mental Measurements
Yearbook without knowing its context. I wish you all the best with your students.