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Validation Studies Involving Successive Classes of Trainee Stenographers 1
Author(s) -
BENDER W. R. G.,
LOVELESS H. E.
Publication year - 1958
Publication title -
personnel psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.076
H-Index - 142
eISSN - 1744-6570
pISSN - 0031-5826
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-6570.1958.tb00035.x
Subject(s) - psychology , interview , test (biology) , aptitude , medical education , applied psychology , developmental psychology , medicine , political science , paleontology , law , biology
Summary T his article is a summary of four validation studies conducted during 1951–1955. Subjects participating in these studies were 171 young females, recently graduated from high school, who were enrolled in four separate, and successive, classes in a work‐study type of stenographer training program. As trainees, these individuals attended business school four hours a day, five days a week, over a period of 38 weeks–usually beginning the latter part of June of each year. The remaining four hours a day were spent in business offices of the Du Pont Company at clerical tasks commensurate with ability. Throughout the training period, trainees were assigned to business offices in teams of two, so that one could be at work while the other attended school. At noon, teammates exchanged places. Certain selection techniques, such as psychological testing and interviewing, were used as an aid in determining qualifications of applicants for employment. Other techniques, including a four‐page biographical inventory and a one‐page teachers’appraisal blank, were also used, not as an aid to selection, but for the sole purpose of obtaining additional, pertinent information. Data obtained by all techniques were recorded systematically for analysis at a later date. Approximately two years after data had been collected on applicants, appraisals of stenographic performance, with regard to those selected, were obtained from supervision. These appraisals served as the criterion for determining validity of personnel evaluation techniques. Performance on the Turse Shorthand Aptitude Test and the Seashore‐Bennett Stenographic Proficiency Test was found to be positively related, in a statistically significant manner, to the criterion of stenographic performance. Furthermore, certain information obtained by interviewing, biographical inventory, and teachers’appraisal blank was found to be consistently related, in a statistically significant manner, to the same criterion. Consistency of these research findings from one class of trainees to the next, throughout four successive classes, are discussed in terms of a conceptual frame of reference concerning human growth, development, and behavior.