Entries in the "I/O Psychology" Category

December 27, 2009
Over the last couple of weeks I've been working on a new blogging project for 2010. I thought that instead of doing more weekly reviews on books or movies, I'd tackle something bigger and honestly more interesting. Well interesting to me; not sure about you yet. I figure, I like...

September 4, 2009
One of my co-workers and I often joked about creating a television sitcom about a group of twenty-something Industrial-Organizational Psychologists who lived in the big city where they learned about love, friendship, and how to leverage the tools and methodologies of psychology to solve organizational problems. This book by...

July 17, 2009
Hey kids! Do you like writing multiple choice test items that exhibit desirable psychometric properties? You DO? Then Developing and Validating Multiple-Choice Test Items by Thomas Haladyna is for you! Glibness aside, I actually did find this to be a pretty useful book and it'll be kept within easy...

May 1, 2009
In their book, Investing in People: Financial Impact of Human Resource Initiatives authors Wayne Cascio and John Boudreau hit on something I've written about elsewhere: making research understandable and meaningful to a wider audience, especially in the context of business. In other words, putting dollar signs in there. After...

April 2, 2009
Over on my other, sometimes updated blog I made a nifty update about using Microsoft Excel to do test item analysis. At least I think it's nifty. It's got a spreadsheet! You can read it here. Now that I'm actually doing this kind of thing at work again, I hope...

November 13, 2008
I don't want to go so far as to say that my other blog, which focuses on the wonderful world of employment selection, is "back" per se, since every time I make that claim I end up coughing out a handful of posts before letting the site lay fallow for...

July 17, 2007
Looks like the July 2007 edition of The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist (a.k.a., TIP, SIOP's quarterly magazine) is online, including my column that I co-author with Marcus Dickson. The column is "Good Science Good Practice" and in each issue we try to highlight research that bridges the gap between scientists and...

May 4, 2007
After almost a year off, I've decided to revive my other blog, SelectionMatters.com. It's less of a personal journal and more of a professional one, with an emphasis on I/O Psychology, employment testing, recruitment, and selection. I had a few people at the SIOP convention last weekend either tell me...

May 3, 2007
Last weekend I journeyed to New York City for the 23rd annual SIOP convention. This was somewhat a big deal, since I hadn't been to New York since I was like four, and a subsequent life's worth of Dirty Harry and Curt Russle movies had convinced me that I would...

March 28, 2007
A self portrait of me reading this book. Taken with the help of a tripod and a camera remote control. See the rest of my Flickr photo stream....

January 12, 2007
Just noticed that the January 2007 issue of The Industrial Psychologist (TIP), the quarterly publication of the Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology, is online, even though I haven't gotten my print copy yet. As usual, my column on Good Science Good Practice is in there. This was an interesting one...

October 24, 2006
Apparently my column in the October 2006 issue of The Industrial Psychologist (or "TIP" to the cool I/O Psychologists) is out. I haven't gotten my print copy yet, but it's also available for virtual perusal by clicking right here. God, they still have that horrible picture of me where...

March 23, 2006
It's no secret that a lot of companies are looking to cut costs and increase effeciencies in their hiring processes. While pre-employment testing has demonstrated benefits in terms of getting better people in the job, it can be costly. Assessments for higher-level managers or executives can costs several thousand dollars...

January 5, 2006
When not doing I/O type stuff, I've been playing a computer game called "World of Warcraft." For you philistines who haven't heard of it, it's an online, fantasy-themed game where you create a character and play with (or against) thousands of other, real people from all over the world....

November 29, 2005
A couple of weeks ago I found myself wandering through one of those stores that sells all kinds of novelty tee shirts with pithy, snarky, rude, and otherwise clever sayings. Silly stuff like "I'm with Stupid" or "Bikini Inspector." And I got to thinking that there's a market here that's...

September 10, 2005
Selection matters, yes it does. So I decided to create a new weblog for it: Selection Matters dot com: "Selection" in this context deals with employment selection and a constellation of related sub-topics: employment testing, interviewing, recruiting, employment law, I/O psychology, and more. There are a lot of Human Resources...

August 11, 2005
I picked this one up at the SIOP convention two years ago and finally got around to reading it. I honestly don't know why I keep buying books like this. It's just kind of this loose glob of papers related to some aspect of personality in the workplace, tied...

July 30, 2005
I'm not sure why I haven't mentioned this before, but in the last few months I've been fortunate to be part of a small group of people who decided to create a professional association of industrial/organizational psychologists working or studying in the San Diego Area. Starting an organization like this...

July 28, 2005
Speaking of Harry Potter, this kind of made my mind boggle. TalentSmart, a company specializing in leadership and employee assessment, wrote a white paper about the different displays of Emotional Intelligence in the Harry Potter books. It describes one dramatic exchange between Harry, Ron, and Hermione, then shares the following...

June 8, 2005
Here's an interesting story that relates, in a way, to employment and selection. It's about two girls who did a bit of a social experiment for a high school class. Both girls looked pretty similar to start with: tall, thin, blonde, and attractive. The hook is that one girl...

June 2, 2005
It's kind of old news given that the Indianapolis 500 is over, but I saw an interesting story on Defective Yeti about Danica Patrick, a female racer who ended up finishing up fourth. Or specifically, it's about the comments of another racer, Robby Gordon, who refused to participate because them...

April 17, 2005
"Wardrobe denegration" is phenomenon that every experienced SIOP-goer is familiar with. Here's how the dress code usually goes: DAY 1: Suit DAY 2: Slacks/skirt and dress shirt DAY 3: Burlap sack Fortunately, the third day is only half a day, and most people don't even stay that whole time. I'm...

April 16, 2005
Hrm. Today didn't start off quite as well, as I missed the 10-second window in the coffee break during which food is actually available. Get there late as I did and all the grad students leave you are crumbs and a few dozen apples. Sessions! 8:00 - 9:50 A.M. Practitioner...

April 15, 2005
I have a long standing SIOP tradition: in the eleven conferences I've been to, I've never go to the presidential address that kicks things off on Friday morning. Not being ensconced in the organization's inner echelon, it just never seemed like there was anything for me in it. This year,...

April 14, 2005
If I may be allowed the indulgance of using a noun as a verb, I've decided to "blog" the SIOP (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology) annual conference this year. No, seriously. Why not? Nobody else is doing it, and if anyone comes here looking to download my presentations and...

March 23, 2005
This morning I worked on the PowerPoint presentation for my Practitioner Forum presentation at this year's SIOP. I spent more time than I should probably admit making this graphic for a slide where I mention our use of scanable forms for employment testing: Still, it made me chuckle, and I...

February 15, 2005
I mentioned a while back how I was elected, through what I think was an uncontested race, to the office of "Vice President - Web Publications" for the Personnel Testing Council of Southern California. This is a fancy pants way of saying "Webmaster" as my duties seem to wholly consist...

February 10, 2005
Ger and I were arguing one day about what kind of cheese Sam likes better, Cheddar or Swiss. Yes, we argue about these kinds of things. Before we had a kid we debated politics, philosophy, and the ontological mysteries of the cosmos, but now it's pretty much "How much did...

February 9, 2005
On one of my frequent trips to work last week I heard a story on the radio about how some corporations are looking to blogs for feedback from their customers. The piece went on about how limited information could be when you get it from marketing surveys, and how many...

January 28, 2005
There's an interesting article on Slate.com about magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and its growing non-medical uses. This is the technology that uses, I think, magnetic waves to create an image of brain activity. It's used for a lot of stuff, but researchers love it because it lets them examine what...

January 21, 2005
Back in graduate school I earned a few bucks on the side as an interviewer for the local phone megalopoly. I and two fellow grad students would gang up on people interviewing for Account Executive positions and take them through a structured panel interview. We all had to take extensive...

January 11, 2005
As you may have noticed, I've added categories to this site. This means that each post is categorized into one or more category, categorically. I initially shunned this feature because it so often seems pointless and leads to having a dozen categories, most of which have one or two posts...

December 7, 2004
I'm going to break my arm patting myself on the back so hard, but I thought I'd share two pieces of good news on the professional front. First, I got two --two!-- submissions accepted to next year's annual Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology conference. One, entitled "The Importance of Test Administration...

September 29, 2004
Here's a shocker: The Americans With Disabilities Act doesn't apply to the Internet. This is the federal law that requires employers and other public entities (like public parks, restaurants etc.) to provide "reasonable accommodations" for people with disabilities. Classic examples of these kinds of accommodations include installing wheelchair ramps, changing...

July 20, 2004
Saw this article USA Today (no, not kidding) about some universities are offering graduate degrees in business, but with an emphasis in science and mathematics. Many students strong in science and math face similar career dilemmas, fueling a stampede into places like law school just as global wars are being...

June 23, 2004
People have been talking about telecommuting for quite a long time. For a lot of people, I can see how it makes sense to work from home using helpful information technology like the Internet and the phone to stay in touch. I've often thought, though, that I like getting out...

June 15, 2004
When my friends and I were kids one of our favorite jokes was to go up to someone and say "Can you answer a simple yes or no question?" When the victim said that they could, we would ask, "Do your parents know you wet your bed?" Hilarity ensued, and...

May 27, 2004
This came up last week and I've been meaning to comment on it. According to this article, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a disabled man was able to sue a local court house under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). The guy was a paraplegic and was to appear...

May 6, 2004
I was listening to the news this morning and they had a piece about how many medical researchers are beholden to the makers of the products they're testing. Furthermore, the major medical journals who publish this research are sometimes unable to deal with this potential bias. If the makers of...

May 4, 2004
Ever come up with a great idea for a study and then have someone else beat you to it? I've mentioned before how some people morph into complete half-wits when they go online. They just do things that they would never do on the phone or much less face-to-face. Furthermore,...

April 28, 2004
Like lots of people with gifts for noticing the blatantly obvious, I knew a long time ago that the Internet would transform recruiting and selection practices. Nowadays there are millions of job seekers online and they can easily spam the heck out of you if you post a job opening....

April 19, 2004
Finally, a story that combines my intimate knowledge of Southern Baptist religious hangups and employment law. It's about Benjamin Endres, a Indiana State Police officer who refused to take an assignment enforcing gambling laws because working in a casino violates his religious (Baptist, to be specific) convictions. His boss told...

April 17, 2004
Rather strict California licensing requirements prevent me from actually calling myself a psychologist, but if they didn't, I would. One of the things that led me into Industrial/Organizational Psychology was an interest in finding out why people behave as they do when put into organizations or even loosely structured situations....

April 5, 2004
That the auto checkin kiosks at the airport hate me with a personal intensity. Enjoying the 4-hour plane ride because it gave me a chance to read for 4 hours straight. The shuttle service at the airport being run by the most incompetent, scatterbrained, and socially retarded unprofessionals I've...

April 1, 2004
I'm headed for Chicago SIOP, where I'll stay until Sunday. I fully expect to not only enjoy myself, but also learn a thing or two. That's the general idea. However, my 'net access will be nil, so no updates until then, though I should have fun writing about it when...

March 31, 2004
This kind of thing just makes me shake my tiny fists in anger until I realize that the world is not yet sufficiently messed up for it to fly. Essentially, a company called Test Central Inc. has claimed that they own the patent to online testing (viewable online here), and...

March 11, 2004
The Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology (SIOP) is the main professional organization for I/O psychologists. I'm a card-carrying member. Actually, I lost the card, but they've got my info in their computer thingie. Call and ask for Betty. She knows me. And it's a good thing, because I'm going to SIOP's...

March 2, 2004
File this under "Odd": The California Supreme Court ruled that Catholic charities in California must provide their employees with medical coverage for birth control. Somebody queue up the song from that Monty Python skit. To quote the New York Times Online article (free registration required): Catholic Charities of Sacramento, which...

February 26, 2004
You know what sucks? Spending weeks stitching together a complicated data set for a validation study, including mismatched, incomplete, and longitudinal data from half a dozen sources, then get results like this (variable names omitted for confidentiality, correlation on top with p value below it): So I got nothin'. But...

February 25, 2004
Yesterday a bunch of old people on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 1967 Age Discrimination Act does not work in reverse. To quote this Yahoo News story: Age has its benefits, the Supreme Court said, ruling that younger workers can't sue their employers when older colleagues get preferential...

February 24, 2004
Anyone out there know how to program SAS to compute a simple correlation coefficient (Pearson's r will do) that corrects for unreliability on the criterion? And while we're on it, do you have information on when it's appropriate to do such a correction? I can't seem to find the topic...

February 9, 2004
Ever have one of those "Hey! They stole my idea!" moments? A while back my co-worker and I were discussing how statisticians could apply their powers to the betterment of mankind by helping them select movies, books, or video games based on self-reported ratings and data clustering methodologies. The idea...

January 30, 2004
Well, not literally. As funny as it would be, nobody is expecting the Senior Editing staff of Journal of Applied Psychology to march the ball up the field. But I/O psych actually does have practical applications to sports. We already know that if you have a bunch of job applicants...

January 14, 2004
This story, sent to me by Frank, is some crazy stuff. File it under "I read it on the Internet" with the appropriate amount of caution, but it discusses the new role that some neuroscientists are playing in determining how advertising affects the human brain. In it, the author describes...

December 23, 2003
I've spent the last couple of days reviewing resumes for the open position in my department. As usual, this makes me laugh and cry at the same time. Even at this level (we're asking for a Ph.D. or Master's degree), you get some really poor resumes, some of which are...

December 18, 2003
One of the my current work projects is a validation study for a set of cognitive ability (i.e., intelligence) and personality tests used to hire Meter Readers at San Diego Gas & Electric. As part of the study, I'm looking at adverse impact ratios. In other words, I'm determining whether...

December 11, 2003
My group at Sempra Energy is looking to hire someone to fill a "People Research Advisor" position. This is the same job I'm currently in, and it's located in sunny San Diego, California. If you're a I/O Ph.D. (or a Master's with experience) or know someone who is, check out...

October 30, 2003
Like many I/O Psychologists, I often make use of the handy Dictionary of Occupational Titles, as well as its sexier sibling, O*NET. Both of these resources aim to provide a comprehensive description of every job in the world economy. If people do it, they want you to be able to...

September 17, 2003
Got the links pageup. If you've been wanting to click on something but you just don't know what, check it out. It's got links to friends' webpages, all my other online sites/projects, and a smattering of some of my favorite articles I did for GameSpy. Also, today was the deadline...