PSYCH 321

Midterm 1

Lecture 2

  • Industrial-Organizational Psychology is the scientific study and practice of psychological principles in the workplace

    • Industrial: Job analysis, performance assessment, assessment and selection, training and development

    • Organizational: Motivation, leadership, interpersonal dynamics, employees’ attitudes and experiences

  • I/O, I and O, I-O inform each other, they are not mutually exclusive

    • Diversity training effectiveness

    • Bias in evaluations of sexual harassment claims

    • Hiring discrimination against working mothers

    • Gender and racial differences in letters of recommendation

  • The role of industrial revolution —> Mass production and specialization of labour

  • Industrial engineering and scientific management by Frederick Taylor

    • Scientific study of work tasks (over rules of thumb)

    • Scientifically select, train and develop employees

    • Cooperate with workers to ensure compliance

    • Division of labour between management and employees

  • Time and motion studies by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth

  • Hugo Munsterberg: People need to “fit” the organization, people are “replacement parts” for the organization machine

    • The system is above all else

  • Hawthorne Studies:

    • 1920s in Western Electric Company in Illinois

    • Focus on the individual instead of human as machine

      • Employee performance as a function of work surroundings AND individual ability

      • Becomes modern day human factors

  • WWI:

    • Army alpha - written (verbal)

    • Army beta - non-verbal test, for those who cannot read and write

    • People were sorted based on their ability, cognition ex to determine where to place them in the army

  • WWII:

    • Army General Classification Test

  • Post-War I-O:

    • Personnel tests extend to civilian workforce

    • Establishment of I-O as a separate specialization within Psychology

      • Organizational psychology began to emerge in 1950s as a result of human relations movement inspired by the Hawthorne studies

    • Science-practitioner model

  • I-O psych is a practice based field

  • Modern trends:

    • Rapid and unpredictable organizational change

    • Human x AI

    • Changing workforce demographics

    • Redefinition of the concept of a “job”

    • Emphasis on work health, well-being, and burnout

    • Changing nature of pay

Lecture 3/4

  • Modern trends:

    • Rapid and unpredictable organizational change

    • Human x AI

    • Changing workforce demographics

    • Redefinition of the concept of a “job”

    • Emphasis on work health, well-being, and burnout

    • Changing nature of pay

  • Three goals of science: Description, prediction, explanation

  • The scientific method: Statement of research problem —> Design of research study —> Measurement of variables —> Analysis of data —> Conclusions from research

  • Theory: A set of interrelated concepts and prepositions that present a systematic view of phenomenon

    • Parsimony

    • Precision

    • Testability/falsifiability

    • Usefulness

    • Generalizability

  • At most basic level is individual level: employee, supervisor, family members, coworkers; individual performance, attitudes, well-being

    • Next is group level: Team cohesion, communication

    • Next is organizational level: org climate

  • The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

  • Theory —> Data (inductive or deductive)

  • Primary research design:

    • True experiments: Randomization and control allows for establishment of causality, questions about generalizability depending on where it is conducted

    • Quasi-experiments: Lack of randomization and limited control, higher generalizability

    • Non-experiment/survey: No experimental control, higher generalizability

  • Secondary research design:

    • Archival research: extraction of existing information, no control

    • Meta-analysis: Statistical summary, file drawer effect

    • Data mining: Volume, velocity, and variety; generalizability

  • Qualitative Research:

    • What you lack in breadth, you make up for it in depth

    • Particularly useful for theory building/exploratory purpose

    • Thematic analysis: Identifying patterns within the data, gather examples that fit within that pattern

    • Ethnography: Scientific study of a group or culture, NOT particularly identifying set patterns but rather just describe

  • Constructs: Psychological entities or concepts of interests

    • Usually cannot be directly observed due to abstract nature

    • Also called conceptual criteria

  • Defining constructs in a way that is observable

    • Measures are developed according to operational definitions to allow us to best infer the construct

    • Also called actual criteria

  • Criterion Deficiency: Degree to which actual criteria fails to over conceptual criteria

    • Can reduce but not eliminate

  • Criterion Relevance: Degree to which actual criteria and conceptual criteria coincide

  • Criterion Contamination: Unrelated to the conceptual criteria - two parts:

    • Bias: extent actual criteria consistently measures something else

    • Error: extent to which actual criteria is related to nothing at all

    • Both distort the conceptual criterion

    • Can be controlled statistically to some degree

  • Reliability: Is the test producing stable and consistent results?

    • Internal consistency forms the baseline of validity

    • A test is only as good as it is reliable

  • Validity: A judgment of how well a measurement adequately measures the construct

  • Threats to internal validity:

    • History effect: Asking someone how they feel about a certain attitude, there may have been an event in the past that affects their answer

    • Maturation effect: Doesn’t account for things naturally progressing

    • Selection effect: Selection bias

    • Attrition effect: There is a bias in people opting in or out of something, happens when you measure something overtime (people may drop out)

  • Sources of data:

    • Organizational record

    • Questionnaire

    • Observations

    • Interview/focus group

  • Data analysis: Effect size refers to the magnitude of any given relationship

    • One indicator is the correlation coefficient r

    • Ranges from -1 to +1

    • Positive or negative

    • Causality: Covariance, time order of events, lack of alternative

    • Correlation is not equal to causation: difficult to infer from non-experimental method

  • No one study proves anything, research is an iterative process

Lecture 5/6

  • Job analysis: Process that determines the important tasks of a job and the human attributes necessary to successfully perform those tasks

    • Cornerstone of human resources and IO psych because it defines performance standards

    • Also called work analysis

    • Work content: What does a worker do (work activities)? How? Why? When? What types of equipment are necessary?

    • Work context: What is the context of the work environment?

    • Worker attribute: What are the requirements of personnel performing the job?

  • When and why do a job analysis:

    • Organizational needs: especially when there is a new problem or change

    • Legal mandate: ensuring fairness (ie no disparate impact)

  • Job analysis hierarchy:

    • Tasks: Activities that are directed to achieve work objectives

    • Position: Set of tasks performed by a certain employee

    • Job: A set of similar positions in the organization

    • Job family: A set of similar jobs

  • Task-oriented procedures:

    • Focuses on work activities - frequency, importance, difficulty

      • Typically rated by incumbents

    • Functional job analysis (FJA):

      • Things refers to physical resources (ex strength, coordination)

      • Data refers to mental resources (ex knowledge, reasoning)

      • People refers to interpersonal resources (ex sensitivity, compassion)

  • Worker-oriented procedures:

    • Knowledge: Types of information needed (for an IO psych instructor: advanced knowledge in IO psych)

    • Skills: Proficiencies that can be practiced (for an IO psych instructor: public speaking to convey information)

    • Abilities: Relatively enduring innate proficiencies (for an IO psych instructor: oral expression-ability to communicate information and ideas so that others will understand)

    • Other: ex personality and capacities (for an IO psych instructor: cultural sensitivity, compassion)

    • KSAOs rated in importance

      • Linkage analysis ties task-oriented with worker-oriented information

      • What type of KSAOs are necessary for specific tasks?

  • Who goes into a job analysis?

    • SME (subject matter expert)

      • Job incumbents, job supervisors, job/work analyst (ex io psychologists)

    • Forms of data: observational, interview, survey questionnaires

  • Job analysis questionnaire:

    • Questionnaire data is gathered in a taxonomy to organize the information

    • Most common taxonomy is Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ)

    • 195 items that describe a job and rated on importance

  • Job analysis methods: Just like any other research method, not one method is perfect

    • Subjective judgment is always an issue

    • Need for good training for both SMEs and job analyst professionals

  • Competency modeling: Core competency are qualities that an organization desire, essentially a critically important KSAO

    • Meant to cover an entire organization instead of being job-specific

    • More abstract and has little precision but populist appeal

Individual Differences

  • Reliability: Is the test producing stable and consistent results?

    • Test-retest reliability

    • Equivalent-form reliability

    • Internal consistency reliability

    • Inter-rater reliability

  • Validity: A judgment of how well a measurement adequately measures the construct

    • Construct (including content): Is the measurement measuring what it’s supposed to measure (including covering the entire domain of the construct?)

    • Convergent: Is the measurement similar to what the construct is supposed to be similar to?

    • Divergent: Is the measurement NOT similar to what the construct is supposed to be dissimilar to?

    • Criterion-related validity: Is the measurement predicting what it is supposed to predict now (concurrently) or later (predictively)?

  • Is it enough to be smart?

    • Often time it is

    • g refers to the general mental or cognitive ability

      • The absolute most predictive factor to job performance (r=22)

      • Stronger for complex jobs

    • Adverse impact: substantially different rate of selection in employment decisions, which works to the disadvantage of a demographic group

  • Physical strength: static, explosive, gross body coordination, stamina

  • Psychomotor ability: motor skills related to flexibility, balance, and coordination

  • Sensory/perceptual ability: detecting and recognizing stimuli, test of depth perception/peripheral vision/auditory attention ex

  • Situationally and temporally consistent patterns of thought, feelings and behaviors

  • Personality is NOT a type; it is on a continuum

  • Can be freer from adverse impact compared to cognitive ability

  • Personality types:

    • Extraversion: Sociable, assertive, active, talkative

    • Agreeableness: Cooperative, helpful, easy to get along with

    • Conscientiousness: Purposeful, determined, organized, controlled, ambitious, hard working

    • Neuroticism: Stability/instability, anxiety, emotionality

    • Openness: Curious, imaginative, creative, unconventional

    • Another trait: Honesty-Humility which includes sincerity, lack of greed, modesty, and fairness

      • Predicts ethical decision-making and lower counterproductive work behaviours

  • Personality vs Ability:

    • Provides incremental prediction above ability

    • In general independent of ability

    • Exhibits less adverse impact against minority groups

    • Problems with self-deception and impression management

  • Integrity Test:

    • Overt

    • Personality-type

    • More predictive of counterproductive work behaviours than job performance or turnover

    • Polygraph usage is controversial

  • Situational judgment tests:

    • Requires individuals to exercise judgments in response to hypothetical workplace situations

    • Assesses appropriateness of specific behaviours for affecting performance outcomes

    • Most appropriate for social functioning dimensions such as conflict management, interpersonal skills, negotiation skills, cultural awareness

  • Biodata: Past life experiences used to predict future behaviours

    • Scoring: Rational, empirical, hybrid

    • Usefulness: High validity, legally defensible, fairness and privacy concerns