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Range Shrinkage of Cognitive Ability Test Scores in Applicant Pools for German Governmental Jobs: Implications for range restriction corrections
Author(s) -
Lang Jonas W. B.,
Kersting Martin,
Hülsheger Ute R.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
international journal of selection and assessment
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.812
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1468-2389
pISSN - 0965-075X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2389.2010.00515.x
Subject(s) - standard deviation , german , psychology , norm (philosophy) , context (archaeology) , range (aeronautics) , test (biology) , statistics , cognition , social psychology , absolute deviation , applied psychology , mathematics , political science , law , engineering , geography , paleontology , archaeology , aerospace engineering , neuroscience , biology
Range restriction corrections require the predictor standard deviation in the applicant pool of interest. Unfortunately, this information is frequently not available in applied contexts. The common strategy in this type of situations is to use national‐norm standard deviation estimates. This study used data from 8,276 applicants applying to nine jobs in German governmental organizations to compare applicant pool standard deviations for two cognitive ability tests with national‐norm standard deviation estimates, and standard deviations for the total group of governmental applicants. Results revealed that job‐ and organizational context‐specific applicant pool standard deviations were on average about 10–12% smaller than estimates from national norms, and about 4–6% smaller than standard deviations for the total group of governmental applicants.