Showing papers by "John E. Hunter published in 1995"

The Impact of Data-Analysis Methods on Cumulative Research Knowledge Statistical Significance Testing, Confidence Intervals, and Meta-Analysis

Abstract: The methods of data analysis used in research have a major effect on the development of cumulative knowledge. Traditional methods based on statistical significance testing have systematically retarded the growth of cumulative research by making it virtually impossible to discern the real meaning of research literatures. Meta-analysis makes it possible to demonstrate graphically the high price the research enterprise has paid for its reliance on significance testing. But in addition to these demonstrations, reform will require that researchers come to understand that the benefits they see as flowing from the use of significance tests are illusory. In research practice and in training of researchers, we must use and teach appropriate data analysis methods: point estimates of effect sizes and confidence intervals within individual studies, and meta-analysis in the integration of multiple studies to produce final conclusions. These reforms are essential to the progress of cumulative research knowledge.

The Fatal Internal Contradiction in Banding: Its Statistical Rationale is Logically Inconsistent With Its Operational Procedures

Abstract: Murphy and Myors (this issue) challenge the conclusion by Schmidt (1991) that banding procedures in personnel selection are fatally flawed logically. In this article, we show that their challenge is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of Schmidt's argument. We show that when that argument is properly understood, it does in fact require the conclusion that there is a fatal logical inconsistency between the statistical rationale underlying banding and the operational procedures for banding. The first part of this article demonstrates this for banding in general; the second part elucidates this inconsistency for a particular form of banding that is currently quite popular-the sliding band with minority preference. We show that the comparisons drawn by Murphy and Myors between banding and scoring procedures such as stanine scores and college grades are based on their misunderstanding of the Schmidt argument and are therefore conceptually and mathematically inappropriate and irrelevant.

Potential Utility Increases From Adding New Tests to the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB).

Abstract: : This research examined whether the validity and classification utility of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASYAB) could be increased by adding additional predictors. The relevant literature indicated that ASYAB validity could be augmented by adding measures of (1) perceptual ability (to increase the validity of the ASVAB measurement of general mental ability) and (2) psychomotor ability. Adding perceptual ability increased the classification utility of the ASVAB by about 3%; the dollar value of this percentage increase increases over years of use of the augmented ASYAB, eventually building up to approximately $83 million per year. Adding both perceptual and psychomotor ability to ASYAB increased classification utility by approximately 5%. The eventual asymptotic value of this increase is $138 million per year. Augmenting the ASVAB produced unequal performance increases for more versus less complex jobs; this fact may be of importance to Navy policy formulation.