Workplace Application: Validation research is critical to understanding the legal defensibility of selection procedures.
A controversial issue in employment law is the use of tests and other selection procedures to make hiring, promotion and other organizational decisions. Tests that are professionally developed and supported by research, and that can have a substantial impact on organizational performance, are usually legally defensible. Tests that are not professionally developed or supported by research, and that have an adverse impact on members of a protected group, can be mechanisms for systemic discrimination. In this presentation, industrial-organizational psychologists review: