{"id":34085,"date":"2022-10-20T06:43:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T06:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hoozoocomm.co.za\/cognadev\/?p=34085"},"modified":"2026-06-29T09:56:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T09:56:05","slug":"predicting-job-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoozoocomm.co.za\/cognadev\/2022\/10\/20\/predicting-job-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Predicting Job Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_custom_heading text=”Predicting Job Performance” font_container=”tag:h1|font_size:35px|text_align:left|color:%23049EB3″ google_fonts=”font_family:Arvo%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal” css=””][vc_empty_space height=”10px”][vc_custom_heading text=”By Paul Barrett” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000″ google_fonts=”font_family:Lato%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal” css=””][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”40px”][vc_column_text css=””]<\/p>\n

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The now famous article by Schmidt, F.L., & Hunter, J.E. (1998).\u00a0The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings.\u00a0<\/a>Psychological Bulletin<\/em>\u00a0124, 2, 262-274; made available a list of meta-analytic validity coefficients of predictors of job performance which have been, and still are, regarded by many as the\u00a0de facto<\/em>\u00a0values for the workplace.<\/p>\n

However, in 2013, Frank Schmidt, In-Sue Oh, and Jonathan Shaffer presented some updated validities in a talk presented at a Personnel Testing Council Metropolitan Washington (PCTMU) meeting: Schmidt, F.L., Oh, I-S., & Shaffer, J. (2013)\u00a0The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 95 years of research findings; An update\u00a0<\/a>, pp 1-9\u00a0(open-access).<\/p>\n

Then, in 2016, the 2013 conference paper was augmented substantially and published as a major preprint article on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) site, It was eventually taken down off the SSRN website as the authors sought formal publication in a journal. The link here is to a pdf copy of the article on the University of Baltimore website\u00a0(open-access). Schmidt, F.L., Oh, I-S., & Shaffer, J.A. (2016).\u00a0The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 100 years of research findings\u00a0<\/a>, pp. 1-74.<\/p>\n

As far as I’m aware (having exchanged emails with In-Sue Oh), the two remaining authors are still trying to get the paper published\u00a0(sadly, Frank Schmidt passed away in August 2021)<\/strong>, after the initial 2016 submission attracted limited interest. Since 2020, the paper has been in the process of a Revise and Resubmit procedure with a major psychology journal.<\/p>\n

I have included its indices here as some of its revised estimates are astounding (e.g. unstructured employment interviews have the same validity as structured ones; although querying this with In-Sue Oh, it would appear the studies used for the meta-analysis of unstructured interviews were actually structured to some degree, although not to the more organized levels of the structured interview studies).<\/p>\n

Finally, a more recent article is “in Press” in an APA journal: Sackett, P.R., Zhang, C., Berry, C.M., & Lievens, F. (2022).\u00a0Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection: Addressing systematic overcorrection for restriction of range\u00a0<\/a>.\u00a0Journal of Applied Psychology<\/em>, Advance online publication, pp. 1-104. This paper recalculates the Schmidt and Hunter (1998) validities based upon a revision of the estimates used to correct for restriction of range in the original paper.\u00a0“We conclude that our selection procedures remain useful, but selection predictor-criterion relationships are considerably lower than previously thought.”\u00a0.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The figure below presents the validity estimates from the three papers introduced above. It is a dynamic graph in that if you hover over any legend entry atthe top of the graph, it will highlight the bars for that publication.<\/p>\n

If you click on any legend entry, it will toggle the removal or re-display of the bars for that publication, allowing you to more easily make pairwise comparisons of validity estimates.<\/p>\n

Page 2 of the figure provides the table of all the validity coefficients from each article, as plotted in the figure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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