I/O Psychology Exam 1

I/O Psychology categories

• divided into 3 categories

  • personnel (industrial) psychology: person-job dynamics

  • organizational psychology: person-organization and meta-organization dynamics

  • human factors (engineering): person-physical environment dynamics

I/O Psychology

• application of psychological principles in the workplace

• five general research areas

  • selection and placement

  • training and development

  • performance management

  • organizational effectiveness

  • quality of work life

selection and placement

• should I be hired? where would my skills and abilities be utilized?

• should I be promoted?

• how do the selection instruments relate to the actual job?

• what knowledge, skills, and abilities are required to perform well on this job?

training and development

• how can I gain more job knowledge and skills?

• what skills are needed to enhance job performance?

• how can we improve technical/communication/managerial skills?

• how can we best work with individuals who are vastly different from ourselves?

performance management

• how am I doing?

• what are my strengths/weaknesses?

• how well do I perform in a team/unit?

• how is the organization doing as a whole?

organizational effectiveness

• how do people fit into organization as a whole?

• what is the mission of an organization?

• what is the structure of an organization?

• are we operating as an efficiently as possible?

• is there about to be a large shift in the organization?

• how does information flow throughout the organization?

quality of work life

• how can you keep me happy and productive at work?

• what makes a healthy and productive workforce?

• how do we increase employee satisfaction?

• how do we keep employees emotionally healthy?

• how does humor help the workplace?

human factors/ergonomics

• what is the best way to design a work environment?

• how should we design tools, equipment, and machinery that employees use on a daily basis?

• use physiology, industrial medicine, and perception to ensure effective operations?

where I/O psychologists work

• academics

• consulting

• private sector

• public sector

• non-profit

scientist-practicioner gap

• scientists who generate evidence based insights vs practitioners who live in day to day reality of helping organizations function better

• figuring out how to bridge the gap between them

early years of I/O psychology

• American Psychological Association founded 1892

• early years (1900-1916) focused on efficiency

• WWI (1917-1918) army alpha and beta tests

• Frederick Taylor and Lillian/Frank Gilbreth made time and motion studies for soldiers

• Elliot Mayo: revery obsession (mind wandering)

• Hawthorne studies

• WWII (1941-1945)

  • human engineering (factors)

  • Office of Strategic Services (OSS): situational stress tests

Hawthorne effect

• people will behave differently if they’re aware they’re being watched

• published in 1930

government intervention

• Civil Rights Act

• Americans with Disabilities Act

• Family Medical Leave Act

• The Information Age

  • Google, Amazon

• government intervention still exists

  • ex. 9/11 and TSA

• The Experience Ace

  • importance of shared experience/interaction

  • COVID

reasons we use to support our claims

• intuition

• opinions of others (authority)

• tenacity (belief perseverance)

• rational thought

• empirical evidence

research circle

• theory —> hypothesis —> data/methods —> [descriptive OR correlation OR experimental OR quasi experimental] —> analysis

operational definitions

• key is to operationalize constructs

• ex. stress

  • surveys

    • yes or no

    • scale of 1 to 10

  • behavioral assessments

  • physiological assessments

qualitative methods

• observations, interviews

• narrative descriptions of events

quantitative methods

• tests, rating scales, physiological measures

• numerical results

triangulation

• examining converging info from different sources (qualitative and quantitative research)

sampling domains

• generalizability depends on group sampled

  • can’t generalize survey of random/non-affiliated voluntary participants to an entire company

• can also depend on how things have changed (survey from pre-COVID may no longer be applicable)

reliability

• consistency or stability of a measure

• test-retest reliability

• inter-rater reliability

• equivalent forms reliability

• internal consistency

inter-rater reliability

• level of agreement among raters

equivalent forms reliability

• calculated by correlating measurements from a sample of individuals who complete 2 different forms of the same test

internal consistency

• assess how consistently items of a test measure a single construct

validity

• whether measurements taken accurately and completely represent what is to be measured

predictor

• test chosen or developed to assess identified abilities or other characteristics (KSAOs)

criterion

• outcome variable describing important performance domain

criterion-related validity

• correlate a test score (predictor) with a performance measured (criterion), resulting correlation often called a validity coefficient

• predictive validity design

  • time lag between collection of test data and criterion data

  • test often administered to job applicants

construct-related validity

• investigators gather evidence to support constructs

• construct: concept or characteristic that a predictor is intended to measure

• ex. extroversion, intelligence

content-related validity

• demonstrates that content of selection procedure represents adequate sample of important work behaviors and activities or worker KSAOs defined by job analysis

• I/O psychologists can use incumbents/subject matter experts (SMEs) to gather content validity evidence

ethics in I/O

• highlights from SIOP

  • competence

  • integrity

    • honest, fair, respectful

    • be aware of belief systems, values, needs, and limitations

  • professional and scientific responsibility

  • respect for people’ rights and dignity

  • concern for others’ welfare

  • social responsibility

problems in the field

• science-practitioner gap

• businesses/companies often less familiar with ethical research standards

  • informed consent

  • confidentiality

• different situations call for different solutions

  • “it depends”

  • context matters

the structural contect

• departmentalization

  • organizations divided into units that perform similar functions

• specialization

  • how work is broken down into smaller, routinized tasks

• chain of command

  • organization’s reporting structure

• unity of command

  • each subordinate being held accountable by one supervisor

• centralization

  • how decisions are carried out in an organization

• span of control

  • number of subordinates a manager is responsible for supervising

• formalization

  • clear rules, procedures, and policies

environmental context

• cross-cultural considerations

  • global issues

  • differences in time spent engaged in work

  • value differences

    • length of work week

    • mandated vacation time

    • differences in views of nepotism

  • sustainability concerns

    • looking green vs being green

    • corporate social responsibility

      • intersection of economic, social, and environmental goals