I__. - International Military Testing Association

atings for the 57 GWB's were correlated across occupations yielding 57
correlations.
RESULTS
Correlations between the rating on the two scales ranged from .77 to .93
for the 57 GWB's, with a mean c of .89, indicating a strong relationship between
relative importance and relative time spent ratings.
DISCUSSION
Sackett, Cornelius, and Carron (1981), Cornelius, Schmidt, and'carron
(1984), and othars have shown in a classification setting that holistic judgments
compared favorably with those made on the basis of large-scale job analyses.
Study 2, described above, showed similar results in that the relative
importance of abilities as measured through linkages with job-specific duties
was nearly identical to that obtained from linkages with the job as a whole.
The results obtained in Study 1 suggest that similar ratings of the importance
of abilities to job performance can be obtained from holistic ratings made by
two types of raters--psychologists and job incumbents. The deterrllination of
which abilities were important to job performance was identical for the two
groups of raters.
At first glance, these findings would appear to make a strong case for
saying there is overkill in the job analysis process and that it is possible to
streamline job analysis procedures for test development. In situations where
one needs results in a hurry, holistic methods can be used. In addition, in this
it was found that it is not necessary to have incumbents rate both importance
and time spent, unless occupations such as police officer or fireman are being
studied. It is well known that it is important for police officers to be able
to use a gun properly, even though they may not spend a lot of time doing it.
However, the equivalence of the results obtained from the three sources and,
thus, the interchangeability of the sources, ultimately depends upon the use to
which the information will be put. As was mentioned above, if job anhlysts want
to determine which abilities are important for job performance, the three sources
of data produce virtually equivalent results. If other types of decisions are
to be made (e.g., weighting the parts of an ability test battery to achieve a
composite score), the absolute differences among the mean ratings could produce
different results. While one could not claim that the results obtained by the
three different methods were equivalent in the terms outlined by Gulliksen
(1968), it would seem that thay could be used inter-changeably in some
circumstances.
REFERENCES
Butler, S.K. and Harvey, R.J. (1988). A comparison of holistic versus decomposed
rating of Position Analysis Questionnaire work dimensions. Personnel Psvcholoay,
41, 761-771.
Cornelius, E.T., Schmidt, F.L., and Carron, T.J. (1984). Job classification
approaches and the implementation of validity generalization results. Personnel
Psvcholosv, 37, 247-260.
French, J.W., Ekstrom, R.B., and Price, L.A. (1963). Kit of reference tests for
coqnitive factors. Princeton, N.J.: Educational Testing Service.
Gulliksen, H. (196a). Methods for detarmining equivalence of measures.
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