According to Stabile (1997) the prevalent use of personality tests as a method to determine the mental an emotional aptitude of employees during the recruitment process has raised ethical and professional issues that question that validity and reliability of the tests that may amount to invasion of privacy and discrimination against minorities. Aside from these concerns, the main thesis of the article is whether personality tests will be advantageous for the employer to outweigh the costs to be regarded as effective hiring tools.
Based on the study of Stabile (1997) the usefulness of personality tests will mainly rely on whether the person who will make use of the results can correctly determine the personality traits of the applicant that will be able to increase the chance of success in a specific job he or she applied for. The results show that there is conflicting evidence in terms of the scope of the personality measures to be considered as truthful predictors of job performance of workers or employees. There are conflicting claims made by researchers can lead to a conclusion that personality measures are questionable in terms of their ability to determine personality traits that may affect the job performance (Stabile, 1997).
Psychological Tests in Law Enforcement Agencies
In the criminal justice system, psychological tests are being used as pre-employment screening of police officers. During the mide-1980s, it was a widely accepted practice for police psychologists to gather information about employment candidates through the use of clinical instruments such as observational, theoretical and experiential perspectives in making recommendations in reference to the job performance of a law enforcement officer in the future (Kitaeff, 2011).
Based on the study of Kitaeff (2011), aside from the personality tests, there are also other independent variables that have been considered as predictive measures of job performance among the police officers. Other measures have tested the mental ability as a significant predictor of success for the police occupation. Since the work of the members of the law enforcement agencies require the use of discretion, it is imperative that psychological tests, mental ability and personality tests should be conducted.
According to Ortmeier (2006), the police officer must possess the following skills and qualities such as proper attitude, integrity, leadership, judgment, communications, human relations, cognitive skills or knowledge and technical skills in order for him to be able to function effectively in the modern society. The police officer must possess the proper attitude in order to gain community support and efficiently carry-out the objectives of the agency. The police attitude is an essential requirement to allow the officers to solve the problems in a proactive manner and not driven by personal biases and motivations. In addition, an officer should serve as a peace-maker by encouraging cooperative relationships within the agency and community while on duty (Ortmeier, 2006). This will make it easier for the agency to achieve its objectives by ensuring that they hire recruits who possess a strong ethical standard in terms of trust to be able to gain public’s belief that law enforcers are fair, credible and act with restraint. By using the psychological tests, the head of the agency can assess the job performance of the applicants, which will determine if the police officer is equip to exercise sensible judgment using his own discretion.
Since the responsibilities of the officers will expose them to various situations such as corruption and bribery, he must be able to have a solid foundation of what is morally right and wrong to avoid wrong decisions. It is also important to consider the characteristic and personal behavior of each officer as part of the recruitment and selection process since it may affect the informal police decision-making process as they carry out their daily functions. It is expected that the police officers encounter ethical dilemmas as well as difficult challenges that demand the use of firm discretion or judgment.
For police agencies, it is necessary that there must be a proper selection and training of potential officers to assess if they possess the required skills and education to be able to perform community policing and problem-oriented policing. Focus must be given on the manner or methods to be used in the performance of the assigned tasks, how to solve problems, communication skills and interpersonal skills, social awareness and how the officer’s participation in community awareness (Dempsey and Forst, 2011).
Issues Surrounding the Administration of Tests
However, even though psychological tests can determine the job performance of an applicant, there are issues surrounding the administration of the personality and psychological tests. In fact, Stabile (1997) has pointed out that many of the traits that are being tested for pre-employment screening are subjective and will be needing a particular expertise in interpreting the results. The main issue that has been identified is that administration of test conducted by an untrained and inexperienced examiner may yield to imprecise outcomes. This skill will command an experiencing and training that is dependent on the ability of the expert to arrive with exact and accurate results. Aside from this, administering some of the projective tests can differ in various factors including the verbal instructions, the tenors when relaying similar instructions to the examinee and the relationship between the examiner-examinee which has the tendency to cause an effect on test performance (Stabile, 1997).
In fact, even renowned doctors states that some of the most painstakingly developed examinations can generate erroneous results. The apprehension of carrying out deficient administration of tests is exacerbated by the fact there has been a propagation of tests that can readily be accessed online, which has the possibility of having rigged test scores that can be manipulated through the use of the Internet. Some of the examinees have learned how to cheat the results in order to ensure that they pass the pre-employment tests and broaden the chance of getting hired. This is particularly applicable to personality tests.
In fact, Stabile (1997) stated that there are some employers who are fully aware of these issues but have willingly accepted the probability of losing honest applicants who cheat on the tests to improve their chances of failing the test. The outcome of this scenario is that honesty testing can cause extreme complexity of getting hired since there are innocent applicants who may fail the honesty test, but those who cheated increase their chances of passing the tests by fabricating false answers. This can result to a negative impact on the employers and at the same time cause stress on the applicants (Stabile, 1997).
Conclusion
In conclusion, administration of tests including psychological and personality traits can pose ethical issues. Some experts believe that it opens the opportunities for the applicants to cheat during the tests by manipulating the answers in situational problems to increase the probability of getting hired. Hence, such instance can greatly affect professional ethics. Thomas and Scroggins (2006) stated that while it is true that personality tests and other cognitive ability measures are valid predictors of job performance, employers and companies should make careful decisions regarding the use of these predictors. The decisions must put an emphasis on the validity maximization rather than the potential adverse impact creation on the basis of organizational values, needs, and strategy (Thomas and Scroggins, 2006). The best way to use the results is by not merely relying on personality tests outcomes since it has the tendency to produce adverse impact. Therefore, it is recommended that it is best to use a combination of personality tests and tests on the cognitive ability during selection of employees to obtain maximum predictive validity (Thomas and Scroggins, 2006). These two types of testing should continuously be developed and refined to avoid ethical issues, invasion of privacy and discrimination against minorities. However, improving on the policies and process on the administration of these tests can result to enhanced human resource toll for the selection of employees in the future (Thomas and Scroggins, 2006).
References
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