Stability and Change in Industrial and Organizational ... - Axon

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judgment test, and supervisory role-play exercises. A more
extended description of these contributions can be found in
the recently released book on Project A and the Career Forces
Project (Campbell & Knapp, 2001).
The preceding provides a feel for the magnitude of the
data collections and the effort put forth on the predictor and
criterion development as well as validation of the measures;
all of this was critical for the project to meet its objectives.
More important for the science of personnel selection and
classification were the substantive contributions derived
from the project’s analyses and results.
First, for both the individual differences predictor and the
job performance criterion domains, the emphasis on latent
variables and latent structure rather than methods (e.g., ratings)
or particular measures (e.g., a biodata survey) was highly
important for generalizing results. The strategy was extremely
successful in specifying job performance as reflecting a consistent
five-factor structure (core technical proficiency, general
soldiering proficiency, effort and leadership, personal
discipline, and physical fitness/military bearing). Each of the
factors was represented by multiple methods. For example, effort
and leadership had as components number of administrative
awards and certificates, the Army-wide rating factor,
technical skill and effort, and the job-specific rating overall
composite. This performance model was confirmed for multiple
jobs in the first-tour sample, and a similar model was derived
and confirmed for the second-tour NCO sample.Also, on
the predictor side exploratory and subsequent confirmatory
factor analyses identified latent variables in each of the domains
represented (e.g., perceptual abilities, personality).
Especially important for the science of personnel selection,
the different performance latent variables were related
to different combinations of and individual predictor latent
variables in theoretically meaningful ways. General cognitive
ability was the primary predictor of the two technical proficiency
performance factors, whereas some of the personality
constructs were more predictive of the personal discipline
and physical fitness/military bearing constructs. These empirical
results support Campbell’s taxonomy of performance,
with constructs widely relevant to the population of jobs. As
mentioned in a previous section, this specification of performance
constructs should encourage accumulation of research
findings according to the effects of individual differences and
other organizationally relevant variables on individual performance
constructs (e.g., Campbell et al., 1993).
Second, if anyone still believed that job performance
could be captured by a single dimension, sometimes termed
the ultimate criterion, that notion was laid to rest in Project A.
Different criteria and different criterion measures were necessary
to adequately capture the performance space. For
Industrial and Organizational Psychology in the 1990s 5
example, work sample and job knowledge tests measured
maximum performance on elements of job performance that
were primarily a function of human abilities, whereas ratings
tapped components that were more motivationally driven.
None of these measures was more ultimate than any other;
each was important and appropriate for measuring a particular
aspect of job performance.
Third, Project A research confirmed the results that general
cognitive ability is a robust predictor of job performance
across jobs (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). However, the results
also showed that—with a wide range of predictor and criterion
variables selected to capture the heterogeneity in both
domains across jobs—differential prediction across jobs was
relatively strong. This finding provides another example of
how research can increase our understanding of individualdifferences/job-performance
linkages by identifying specific
criterion constructs rather than working with the overall job
performance construct.
Thus, the Project A research program provided industrial
and organizational psychologists with an unprecedented opportunity
to study relationships between a broad array of individual
differences and job performance constructs. Perhaps
most noteworthy was the specification of job performance,
resulting in a replicable multidimensional model of performance.
This depiction of performance coupled with a combination
concurrent and predictive validity design allowed
researchers to learn a considerable amount about specific
linkages between the individual differences and each one of
these performance constructs.
Development of the Occupational Information
Network (O*NET)
A major contribution of industrial organizational psychology
to human behavior at work has been in the form of taxonomies
and structures for describing the world of work.
However, as the world’s economy has matured and shifts
in the kind of work being performed have occurred (in developed
countries in particular), it became increasingly clear
that there was a need for new systems for characterizing
work and the demands it places on people and organizations.
The system that best described jobs in place was that of the
Dictionary of Occupational Titles. In it, jobs were located in
a three-dimensional space defined by the human characteristics
needed to perform the job, the way in which data were
handled in the job, and the physical characteristics of the
job (i.e., People x Data x Things). A coding system based
on the descriptive taxonomy located thousands of jobs
within the space and was extremely useful for estimating
what was needed to perform particular jobs (skills, abilities,